Batman (TV Milestones) [Illustrated] 0814338178, 9780814338179

Citation preview

—Henry Jenkins, co-author of Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture “Matt Yockey’s marvelous volume on Batman deftly captures the complexities of the Adam West TV show. From consumerism to civics, from the political contradictions embodied in Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl and Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman to the irresistible campy playfulness of Liberace meeting Batman, Yockey combines close analysis of the episodes with a detailed historical context. The most expert Bat-fan will find something new, fascinating, and fun in Yockey’s critical but affectionate study.”

BATMAN

B AT MAN

“Matt Yockey pulls off one mask after another to reveal the multiple double identities at work in the iconic 1960s Batman television series—a program for adults as well as children; Pop art as well as trash culture; progressive parody as well as conservative and patriarchal propaganda; mass market commodity as well as incitement for playful participation, attracting both fans and anti-fans. As a child of the 1960s, Batman is a sacred text for me, but Yockey knows his stuff, takes the series seriously enough to understand its meaningfulness, but still remembers how much fun this Bat-text can be.”

Yockey

CINEMA AND TELEVISION STUDIES

—Will Brooker, professor at Kingston University and author of Batman Unmasked and Hunting the Dark Knight  “This book makes a convincing case for the significance of the 1960s TV series Batman by showing how its parodic tone and Pop art visuals negotiated the major issues of its time, from gender and race to consumerism and citizenship. Today, when the ‘Dark Knight’ version of this comic book figure has attracted so much attention, this lively study reminds us of the formative role this TV program had in self-reflexively mining the ambivalences of postwar American society in a manner that would pave the way for future Batmen.” —Barbara Klinger, professor of film and media studies at Indiana University Matt Yockey is assistant professor of film studies at the University of Toledo. His work on fan studies and the superhero genre has appeared in such publications as The Journal of Fandom Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures, The Velvet Light Trap, and Studies in Comics.

Matt Yockey

TV Milestones Series Cover image © Electric Crayon / istockphoto.com

Wayne State University Press Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309

Batman_Yockey_CoverMechanical.indd 1

TV

MILESTONES SERIES

10/22/13 9:52 AM

Batman

TV Milestones Series Editors Barry Keith Grant Brock University

Jeannette Sloniowski Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series. A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne University of St. Andrews

Frances Gateward California State University, Northridge

Caren J. Deming University of Arizona

Tom Gunning University of Chicago

Patricia B. Erens School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Thomas Leitch University of Delaware

Peter X. Feng University of Delaware

Walter Metz Southern Illinois University

Lucy Fischer University of Pittsburgh

BATMAN

Matt Yockey

TV

MILESTONES SERIES

Wayne State University Press Detroit

© 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 18 17 16 15 14

54321

ISBN 978-0-8143-3817-9 (paperback) Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944342 ISBN 978-0-8143-3818-6 (e-book)

To Eric Yockey for leading the way

Contents

Introduction: Batman Begins 1 1. Bat-Civics 13 2. Bat-Difference 39 3. Bat-Casting 69 4. Bat-Being 99 Conclusion: Batman Forever 123 Notes 129 Bibliography 135 Index 143

vii

Introduction

Batman Begins

Dear Sir: Batman is the silliest, stupidest show on television and I love every minute of it. Yours truly, Ricky W., Chicago, Ill.1

A

little over a month after ABC’s action-comedy series Batman debuted on January 12, 1966, Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin bemoaned that the highly rated show had been “merchandised beyond the dreams of avarice . . . shaping our televiewing for years to come” and was a “tasteless, witless . . .  bore . . . born of a devout and monumental cynicism toward the television audience.”2 Champlin’s screed confirms how some critics, patrolling the border between high and low cultures, were aghast at the show’s explosive popularity. At the same time, Champlin also betrays a marked misunderstanding of the show and its audience. What he saw as a cynical manipulation of the television audience was, in fact, a turning point in the evolution of the relationship between the producers of television content and its viewers. Batman worked not because its audience was slyly duped by Hollywood tastemakers but because viewers were encouraged to be engaged participants in

1

Introduction

2

the show’s skillful deconstruction of the tropes of television, the superhero genre, and America itself. In artfully blending a dual address to viewers—both children and adults—eager to embrace the show’s broad representations of good versus evil, Batman was the first television program to tap into the increasingly strong undercurrents of ambivalence about postwar American culture. Batman was a unique and significant series because it allowed that the audience wanted to both endorse and critique traditional American values that were intimately linked to an equally conflicted sense of personal identity—a first in the history of American television. As a national phenomenon, Batman allowed audiences the safe confines of mass culture in which to understand themselves and the nation as social constructs during a period in which social meaning was increasingly contested in America. Such work required that Batman be highly formulaic because it was within those fixed and familiar boundaries of television genre form and content that ambivalence could be safely expressed. Each episode follows a clear template: in a pre-credit sequence a dire threat to Gotham City from a nefarious villain is established. Police Commissioner James Gordon (Neil Hamilton) contacts Batman (Adam West) by way of an emergency Bat-phone that links his office with (unbeknownst to the commissioner) “stately Wayne Manor,” the home of millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, his “youthful ward” Dick Grayson (Burt Ward), and Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake), who seems to exist in a perpetual benign fog, oblivious to the superhero identities of Bruce and Dick. Bruce Wayne’s English butler Alfred (Alan Napier) takes Gordon’s call and discreetly informs Masters Bruce and Dick that their services as Batman and Robin are required. The two, usually involved in some absurdly mundane activity with Aunt Harriet, such as practicing birdcalls on the balcony, make a hasty excuse and slip into the study. There they activate a secret panel and slide down twin Bat-Poles (helpfully labeled “Bruce” and “Dick”) to the Batcave. This action cues

Batman Begins

the credit sequence, which features a series of stiffly animated cartoon images of Batman and Robin battling a criminal cohort while the infectious theme song plays. The body of the episode then features a criminal plot that the Dynamic Duo work to thwart, allowing Batman to demonstrate his keen skills of detection and Robin his knack for solving childish riddles and interpreting bizarre clues (all the while qualifying his exclamations with “Holy!”). With an arsenal of Bat-branded equipment at their disposal, most notably the atomic-powered Batmobile, Batman and Robin pursue their criminal target. After a fight with the villain and/or his or her henchmen (complete with onomatopoeic visual effects to punctuate the kicks, punches, and belly flops), one or both of our crime fighters is caught in a seemingly inescapable trap, such as being dipped in a vat of boiling wax to be made into a giant candle. As the episode ends, a voice-over narrator (executive producer William Dozier) breathlessly advises viewers to tune in tomorrow at the “same Bat-time, same Bat-channel” to see if our heroes make it out alive. The follow-up episode sees their successful escape and ultimate defeat of the villain, who is sent off to Gotham State Penitentiary with a stern admonition from Batman about the inevitable failure that comes from a life of crime. Order is restored, at least until next week’s double episodes. In light of the popularity of the syndicated series The Adventures of Superman (1952–1958), ABC first considered producing a live-action Saturday morning Batman series in 1963; however, the project lay dormant until 1965 when the network approached William Dozier, head of Greenway Productions at 20th Century Fox, about producing a Batman show for prime time. To better familiarize himself with the Batman character, Dozier, a former producer at CBS and Screen Gems, Inc., bought a clutch of Batman comic books and read them on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. According to his daughter “he was laughing out loud . . . and . . . [got] the idea to do the show just like the comic books. He was almost the inventor of

3

Introduction

4

camp humor.”3 Dozier contacted Lorenzo Semple, Jr., a New York playwright who previously had written scripts for Greenway Productions. Recalls Semple, “Bill Dozier and I had seen millionaire Bruce Wayne and his Bat regalia as classy comedy, hopefully appealing to kids as an absurdly jolly action piece and to grown-ups for its deadpan satire.”4 Coincidentally, while Semple was writing his first script in the fall of 1965, the 1943 Batman movie serial was re-released theatrically, and adult audiences roared with laughter at its unintentionally funny take on the Caped Crusader. Likely emboldened by the campy reception of the serial, ABC, which was a distant third in the ratings war behind CBS and NBC, accelerated production of Batman. Rather than release it for the 1966–1967 season, as originally planned, it was scheduled as a mid-season replacement for Shindig (1964–1966), a pop-and-rock music program that aired twice a week. Thus, in part due to an accident of programming, the show duplicated the cliff-hanger structure of the serial, further aligning it with a camp spirit of the era linked to the Pop art movement. This spirit is evident in the show’s use of such aesthetic devices as canted angles for the villains’ lairs and bright colors wedded to the double register spelled out by Semple. In the episode “The Riddler’s False Notion” (28 April 1966), for example, Robin is tied up and pushed off the top of a building by the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), only to be saved at the last instant when he clasps with his teeth the Batrope thrown to him by Batman. When he is pulled to safety, the Boy Wonder exclaims, “Holy molars, am I ever glad I take good care of my teeth!” Batman responds soberly, “True. You owe your life to dental hygiene.” It is not difficult to imagine young viewers uncritically absorbing the combination of high drama and hygiene lesson while the adults around them burst into laughter. At the core of this effect is the show’s hybrid identity as an action-comedy series, a hybridization that segments its audience by age via its blended genre codes. Yet, the laughter of adults is generated

Batman Begins

by the friction produced in the intersection of their adult sensibilities and the memories of their own childhood fantasies of fair play and good citizenship. As a theater manager observed about the reception of the re-released 1943 serial, “The audiences were mostly college students or people in the 21–35 age bracket. Some came just to laugh—the film is bad—and some came for sentimental reasons.”5 The show’s popularity with adults is thus based in part on its appeal to a nostalgic vision of childhood remediated via the mass culture parody of a signifier of that childhood. Accordingly, Batman was important as a selfreflexive television text that both its producers and many audience members used to critique a number of culturally induced binaries: child/adult, producer/consumer, and past/present. Certainly in 1966 Batman was significant to many Americans as an easily recognizable pop culture icon strongly attached to the personal but also deeply embedded in a collective experience as both a commodity and as a signifier of hegemonic national values. Unlike most superheroes, Batman has no special powers, marking him as a more accessible representation of American values. Implicitly he has earned his status as a superhero. In their study of the ways in which original juvenile viewers of the series recalled it as adults, Lynn Spigel and Henry Jenkins observe that their subjects variously used their memories to sustain progressive and conservative interpretations of their experiences with the series. Importantly, these recollections were all highly personal and articulated according to a relationship of adult authority to the child viewer. In remembering, the boundary between adulthood and childhood is simultaneously confirmed and crossed. This process is the springboard for engaging within the public sphere, for, according to Spigel and Jenkins, “memories are one of the rare common grounds upon which people think about the present-day world.”6 As they argue, this practice was principally sanctioned by the show’s deployment of a Pop art deconstruction of critical hierarchies linked to a camp sensibility. In a 1966 collection of

5

Introduction

6

Camp counselor: William Dozier (center) confers with Adam West (left) and Burt Ward (right). (Courtesy of John Stacks)

essays, Susan Sontag famously defined camp as a new, highly reflexive mode of production and consumption in the postwar era: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. . . . To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-asPlaying-a-Role.”7 This present monograph critically examines the significant ways in which the show skillfully exploited this notion of “Being-as-Playing-a-Role” in its reflexive take on citizenship within its diegesis and, by extension, shifting notions of American identity tied to postwar consumerism amidst the radically polarized political landscape of the mid to late 1960s. By appealing to juvenile viewers’ desire to participate in the adult sphere of citizenship and to adult viewers’ nostalgia for their own childhoods, Batman conflates a public history (both cultural and political) with individual histories. As Sontag notes, camp uses the “old-fashioned” objects because “we become less

Batman Begins

involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt.” 8 In this light, it is worth noting the tremendous popularity of comic books in America, particularly during World War II, when the superhero genre dominated the medium. By the close of the war, 70 million Americans (half the population of the country) read comic books.9 In this period the superhero, a utopian figure of great value at a time of national crisis, was strongly linked to American ideals of individualism in defense of the status quo. Bradford W. Wright has characterized the earliest generation of superheroes, of which Batman is a member, as “super-New Dealers” who, during World War II, “championed a loosely defined Americanism synonymous with lofty ideals like democracy, liberty, and freedom from oppression.”10 Yet there is also a strangely appropriate duality to the superhero as a national symbol. As cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer contends, “The advent of the super-hero was a bizarre comeuppance for the American Dream. Horatio Alger could no longer make it on his own. . . . once the odds were appraised honestly it was apparent you had to be super to get on in this world.”11 Thus a figure such as Batman, who in his secret identity of Bruce Wayne is still exceptional, endorses American values even as he suggests that those values can only be managed by a psychologically damaged and selfishly motivated millionaire. Consequently, Batman can indicate, according to a 1966 New York Times editorial on the show, “that many of our national conventions are ridiculous.”12 The success of Batman as an adaptation of the source comic books indicates the nostalgic appeal it had for adult viewers in the face of new national crises. Such a view confirms the show as a prime example of what Jenkins terms convergence culture: “where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.”13 With Batman the outcomes of convergence are further articulated according to Jenkins’ concept of textual poaching, the process whereby

7

Introduction

8

audiences draw their own meanings out of a text, often reading against the grain of intended meaning and frequently creating their own texts in response. There are two principal antecedents of textual poaching of Batman that informed Dozier and Semple’s own poaching of the original comic books for Batman. The first of these is the 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who, detecting a gay subtext in Batman comic books, claimed that Batman and Robin represented “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.”14 The second of these is the appropriation of comic book iconography in the work of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Producers Dozier and Howie Horwitz’s approach to Batman required adult viewers to be able to detect in a parodic way the hints of subversion that Wertham took so seriously and to embrace the ambivalence about mass culture that underpinned Pop art. In both cases, the viewer engages with the utopian promises of both the superhero and the nation. Through its parodic register Batman acknowledges the utopian impulses embedded in America and mass culture while maintaining a distance from them. In turning to a widely recognizable icon, Batman exploited Pop art and camp strategies to authorize viewers to interrogate national values by way of a collective memory of the super­ hero. Batman was, after all, the most popular of a number of superhero texts in that period that either openly critiqued the representation of ideal American values or that adult audiences (usually college-age) re-read as such. These included a tonguein-cheek Superman Broadway musical in 1966, It’s a Bird . . .  It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman, and the aforementioned theatrical re-release of the 1943 Batman serial. Meanwhile, with their highly popular character Spider-Man, Marvel Comics reinvented the superhero as a modern urban neurotic conflicted about his superhero role. Accordingly, Batman actualizes Stuart Hall’s contention that popular culture is a vehicle by which social transformation is worked out according to the dialectic of

Batman Begins

containment/resistance.15 Further, as Spigel and Jenkins’ work confirms, this ongoing tension between stasis and change is doubly articulated on the levels of the personal and the public. Finally, transformation indicates temporal movement (either backward or forward), and, accordingly, it is useful to bear in mind the relationship between Raymond Williams’ dominant (present), residual (past), and emergent (future) in terms of both the individual and the collective.16 The competing desires for change and stability are experienced and reflected in the domains of the public and the private, and Batman offered viewers a vehicle by which these conflicting desires could be expressed (though, following the logic of mass culture, never wholly resolved). The notion of consumption as a mode of democratic participation was a central precept of postwar American culture. As Lizabeth Cohen notes, amidst the postwar economic boom, “mass producers proposed an alternative route to democracy, a mass consumption utopia that would benefit all purchaser consumers by raising everyone’s standard of living.”17 Thus, she writes, consumption “fulfilled personal desire and civic obligation.”18 Economic prosperity (real and perceived) was seen as social progress without any requisite political change.19 It is in this context that the ideological ambiguity of the superhero is on full display. The Adventures of Superman attached for the first time the bromide “truth, justice, and the American way” to its titular character in a fit of Cold War hysterics during the 1950s, while Wertham famously pronounced comic books a key cause of juvenile delinquency in America. Depending on your point of view, superheroes could embody either “the American way” or a direct threat to the American way of life. In its parodic, campy tone, Batman authorized contradictory interpretations that could be used as a means of engaging contemporary ideas of American identity with those of the past. In a TV Guide article published two months after the show’s debut, Status magazine editor Reg Potterton asserts that Batman

9

Introduction

10

is “mass camp. It can be appreciated by the greatest number of people, as opposed to low camp, which is more exclusive and therefore less desirable, or to high camp, which is rarefied camp.”20 This speaks to Barbara Klinger’s notion of mass camp as a means of asserting mastery over mass culture, a method by which “low” culture can be empowering.21 Her contention that camp gravitates to objects of the past and imposes present standards on them helps explain both Batman’s popularity and use of camp. Confirming that Sontag’s Being-as-Playing-a-Role was one of the show’s central camp tools, the August 1966 issue of Esquire magazine featured a nearly full-page image of Andy Warhol dressed as Robin and the model-singer Nico as Batman; the two were accompanied by a caption asserting that this picture defines the 1960s, a decade “so packed with hysteria, so intense and frenetic . . . that they have well nigh obliterated all that came before.”22 The Esquire piece suggests that the ironic quotation of an emblem of childhood and ideal American values is a direct response to present-day crises. If, as Sontag offers, “camp and tragedy are antitheses,” then Batman, like the Pop art movement that strongly informed it, consciously responds to the crises of the 1960s through its camp tone. Sontag asks rhetorically, “What other response than anguish, followed by anesthesia and then by wit and the elevating of intelligence over sentiment, is possible as a response to the social disorder and mass atrocities of our time?”23 In placing quotation marks around American values, the show foregrounded each individual viewer’s capacity to participate in and shape the construction of American identity. In this way, the show was particularly valuable to adult viewers during a time of intense social crisis in America. This register of the show reflected the general value of the superhero to children: because the superhero is always performing dual identities, he or she offers a model of how children can be part of normative culture (as defined by adult authority) with the freedom to be separate from it (i.e., the liberation of childhood play). Batman

Batman Begins

appeals to adults, then, because it links this playful spirit of childhood with the re-articulation of an adult identity. The show authorizes the textual poaching of one’s own childhood. If, as Benedict Anderson has famously observed, the nation is an imagined community, Batman dared to suggest that such a community could be best imagined through the lens of childhood, a lens that provides a new perspective on both the nation and the individual. Batman then promotes a turn toward mass culture as a politically and socially utopian move, one that allows for a re-inscription of the individual within the collective by the individual him or herself. Batman’s more overtly critical representation of the superhero as national symbol arrived at a time in which increasing market segmentation coincided with the rise in identity politics. The convergence of the two extends the synthesis of consumption and citizenship already germane to the superhero genre, so that, according to Cohen, “what resulted was a new commercial culture that reified—at times even exaggerated— social difference in the pursuit of profits, often reincorporating disaffected groups into the commercial marketplace.”24 The result is that Batman confirms the validity of the postwar consumer-citizen but also articulates the limits of this new subjectivity. If participation in the public sphere is defined for the average American in this period in terms of consumption, then it is within that sphere that the limits of that participation are acknowledged and challenged. As with the bifurcated identities of its two heroes, Batman offers that a postwar consumercitizen identity is predicated on the pleasures derived from the ongoing tension inherent in dualities. These are the pleasures sustained by the maintenance of crises, not their resolution, for it is through a constant sense of crisis that one continually reinscribes who the individual is, a composite identity determined to various degrees by who one was and who one wants to be (i.e., irresoluble utopian impulses). A personal sense of crisis is exploited by the machinations of mass culture, which

11

Introduction

12

only gestures toward resolving Hall’s dialectic of containment/ resistance and Williams’ dialectic of residual/emergent. The product of each dialectic is the cultural expression and the individual subjectivity articulated in the present moment. The consumer-citizen is trapped between idealized images of the past and the future, and in the intersection of past and future is produced the impossible utopian figure of the superhero. Batman allows that its title character is a constant signifier that we can always turn to in the paradoxically comforting rituals of crisis, at the same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, keeping us safely linked to, yet removed from, a stultifying past and an unknown future.

Chapter 1

Bat-Civics

Dear Batman, I have a question. Has President Johnson ever been to the Batcave? Sincerely, Steve R., Atlanta, Georgia1

W

ith the country swept up in the “Batmania” inspired by the television series, a feature-length Batman movie was released in the summer of 1966. In one scene, Batman and Robin narrowly survive an encounter with a submarine manned by the Penguin (Burgess Meredith). Back on land, Batman telephones the Department of the Navy at the Pentagon from the Bat­mobile. Interrupting an admiral playing a children’s game with his secretary (with a trash can in the background labeled “Classified Waste”), Batman learns that the navy had indeed recently sold a war-surplus submarine to a “P.N. Gwynn.” The slow-witted admiral asks Batman, “Your tone sounds rather grim. We haven’t done anything foolish, have we?” An incredulous Batman replies with barely contained contempt, “Disposing of pre-atomic submarines to persons who don’t even leave their full addresses! Good day, Admiral.” Hanging up the phone, the admiral can only look off-screen and utter a chagrined “Gosh.”

13

Chapter 1

14

Batman’s satirical take on the American military in this scene is quite significant in light of the tumultuous social changes of the period, particularly the antiwar movement. According to Gallup polls, support for the war in Vietnam “was strong in 1966 but began to erode soon after, remaining under 50 percent after July 1967.”2 Batman’s vexed articulation of the everyday and fantasy, of the very meaning of an American identity, was particularly resonate during a time in which the collectivist spirit of World War II (the “total war” effort) that was meant to be carried forward by a comparable postwar ethos of consumption (as inherently anti-communist) failed. In this context Batman was an effective vehicle by which viewers negotiated the promises and failures of postwar America as a popular will became increasingly splintered. The show trafficked heavily in the tropes of ideal citizenship. The 100th episode of Batman, “The Unkindest Tut of All” (19 October 1967), sees the fourth appearance of the nefarious King Tut (Victor Buono), a Yale professor of Egyptology who assumes the persona of King Tut after recurring blows to the head (in this case after being hit by a brick at a love-in). In this episode Tut publicly predicts impending crimes in Gotham City, ostensibly in the interest of the public good. Rightly suspicious that Tut’s predictions are a ploy to mask his own criminal plot, Batman and Robin confront the rotund villain as he makes a new prognostication to the press. In response to Batman’s accusation that his predictions are “nothing but phony, fatuous flim-flam . . . all part of some dastardly trick,” Tut asserts that he is doing his civic duty because of his earnest belief that “this town can be a better, safer place to live.” Batman relents, reassuring Robin, who is anxious to arrest Tut on the spot, that “the Constitution provides that a man is innocent until proven guilty. And the Constitution is the cornerstone of our great nation. We must abide by it.” An abashed Robin acquiesces: “Gosh, when you put it that way, Batman, how can I help but agree?”

Bat-Civics

This scene crystalizes Batman’s double address to children and adults. Taken at face value by a young viewer for whom national values were constantly reinforced elsewhere on television, Batman offered the superhero as that erstwhile defender of truth, justice, and the American way. On the other hand, for adult viewers the show was a send-up of uncritical patriotism. The early 1960s are marked by challenges to the integrity of the state: the struggle for civil rights in the South was regarded by progressives as a crisis that required the intervention of the federal government, while more conservative forces regarded that same intervention as the real crisis. Perhaps the greatest threat to the nation-state occurred with the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, a moment that, like the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, was understood as part of a larger cultural war between progressives and conservatives. For progressives, the inaccessibility of the American Dream to all Americans fueled the civil rights and women’s rights movements that compelled the state to act on behalf of all of its citizens, not just some. Thus many Americans, in particular young people and minorities, were increasingly prone to question not only the tenability of an “American way” but its very meaning. If, in retrospect, George Reeves in long underwear in The Adventures of Superman seemed a corny anachronism, so did an uncritical acceptance of the “traditional” American values he stood for. A superhero extolling the virtues of citizenship on television two nights a week while American inner cities burned and American troops in Vietnam died on the evening news left most adults little option but to take Batman as parodic critique of unquestioning patriotism. The textual history of Batman is the textual history of the superhero as an emblem of American values, both reflecting and shaped by hegemony. An expressly American invention, the superhero came to life with the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). The success of this character ushered in a wave of colorfully costumed crime fighters, with Batman

15

Chapter 1

16

arriving on the scene in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Batman quickly became almost as popular as Superman and by 1940 was appearing in two other comic books—Batman and World’s Finest Comics. World War II saw an explosion in comic book sales (peaking at 25 million copies per month by the end of 1943) and the solidification of the superhero as an expression of national political will, their reductive good versus evil narratives easily translatable to the war cause.3 While in his earliest incarnation Batman is a violent vigilante, the introduction of Robin in 1940 greatly lightened the tone of the stories, and the Caped Crusader stopped firing bullets at criminals and began peppering them with one-liners. According to Batman’s co-creator and artist Bob Kane, his editors decided “to get away from Batman’s vigilanteism [sic] and to bring him over to the side of the law” out of fear of a parental backlash generated by a widely reprinted anti-comic book editorial titled “A National Disgrace.”4 In the increasingly juvenile comic books of the 1950s, the turn from Dark Knight to Bat-dad continued with the proliferation of an extended “Bat-family,” including a Batwoman, an inter-dimensional imp named Bat-Mite, and even Ace the Bat-Hound. Such changes were in response to public pressures brought about by 1954 Senate hearings on comic books’ alleged corrupting influence on American youth. Thus the intervention of institutional modes of social control repressively shaped a monolithic idea of ideal citizenship that worked to increasingly place Batman in the realm of ideological and narrative fantasy. In purchasing Batman comic books as part of their research for the series, Dozier and Semple most directly referenced the 1950s iteration of Batman. Batman #176 (December 1965), which was on newsstands as the earliest episodes of the show were being written, was a collection of reprints of Batman stories dating from 1946 to 1959 that were clearly incorporated into the show. Significant elements of seven of the stories in this collection appear in three episodes from Season 1 and another

Bat-Civics

episode early in Season 2. More generally, the tone of these stories is directly reflected in the show’s tongue-in-cheek approach, an adult remediation of the stories written for children. Thus the series is referencing the erstwhile, ideologically conservative Batman of the 1950s when, for example, in “The Unkindest Tut of All,” Batman tells Tut before their climactic fight, “As a duly deputized officer of the law, it’s my duty to advise you of your rights.” West’s Batman is an evocation of the most prominent version of the character and the superhero genre at that time, an ideologically conservative, uncomplicated embodiment of rigidly heteronormative American values, a figure increasingly out of place in the tumultuous 1960s. In an earlier scene, Batman advises Tut to give himself up for psychiatric care, promising, “Once rehabilitated, I’m sure you will become a valuable member of the community.” Tut rhetorically asks in response, “Who else in this present day dynasty could be that square?” This moment partially echoes the conclusion of a story in Batman #176, in which Batman informs a captured Mr. Zero (renamed Mr. Freeze for the series), “Now we’ll see if the law can straighten out your distorted mind!” The comic book, however, lacks the villain’s withering put-down of the “square” superhero. For the adult viewer, Batman is both a reflexive throwback to a previous generation, a nostalgic signifier of a childhood and national innocence lost, and a wry send-up of the romantic fantasies of citizenship fostered in youth. The value of Batman for many adult viewers resided in not only cathartically affirming the untenable nature of 1950s values but a melancholic pining for a time in one’s life when those values could be unquestioningly accepted. The adult Batman viewer has lost a childhood subjectivity invested in the utopian promises of America. As the show debunks those promises for its adult viewers, it reinforces them for its juvenile audience. Consequently, there is added value to the relationship between Bruce/Batman and Dick/Robin. Both as millionaire guardian and superhero mentor, Bruce/Batman tutors Dick/Robin

17

Chapter 1

18

regarding ideal citizenship. Bruce is constantly reminding Dick, as Batman reminds Robin, of the necessity to do one’s homework, buckle up when driving, obey parking laws, etc. Thus Bruce/Batman’s tutelage of Dick/Robin stands in for a paternalistic relationship between state and citizens, reinforcing it for young viewers, lampooning it for adults. When Batman advises Robin against arresting King Tut, for example, he functions simultaneously as the foster father tutoring his ward and the supervisor instructing his employee, both roles underpinning the state’s paternalistic role in the lives of its citizens. Yet, again, that paternalism is also emphatically non-normative; Dick Grayson is not simply Bruce Wayne’s ward but his partner in crime fighting, garbed in an equally outlandish costume. This relationship is foregrounded in “The Joker Goes to School” (2 March 1966) and its follow-up, “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul” (3 March 1966). The first episode opens with Dick lifting weights in the gym at Woodrow Roosevelt High School, watching in admiration as the school’s cheerleaders practice a simplistic cheer. (When Dick asks if they wrote it themselves, Susie, the head cheerleader, replies, “Oh, heck no. Miss Browning, our poetry professor.”) When the thirsty cheerleaders attempt to use a milk vending machine (“Let’s take a break, gang. Anyone for a drink?”), it spews out silver dollars, the beginning of a plot by the Joker (Cesar Romero) that is aimed, as Commissioner Gordon ominously intones later, at Gotham City’s youth. The episode immediately settles into the series’ usual groove of parodying traditional American values through icons of Americana: the presidential conflation of Woodrow Roosevelt that is both connotative and meaningless; a guileless Dick enjoying the cheer while weight lifting; the exuberant cheerleaders attempting to innocently imbibe milk. Meanwhile, at Wayne Manor, we find Bruce Wayne being asked to run for mayor. “It’s funny,” Aunt Harriet exclaims, “they come to you with this same offer every two years. You’d think they’d get it through their heads you’re not interested.” Bruce declines

Bat-Civics

the proposition, asserting that “the good works of my Wayne Foundation require that I stay above the brawl of politics.” Bruce’s guest, Mr. Vandergilt, presses Bruce: “But Gotham City needs you. Think of our problems: the snarl of traffic, a water shortage, and now these recurrent power failures.” The philanthropic patriarch is seen as the best person to address problems of urban administration; the city sees itself as another project for Wayne, whose ability to organize and manage is confirmed by his work for the Wayne Foundation and within the confines of his own home. In effect, Vandergilt turns to Bruce, pleading that he take on the city as another ward. The meeting is interrupted by Alfred, calling Bruce to the Bat-phone. Thus we are reminded (as if we needed to be) that Bruce does much more for Gotham, not as the head of the Wayne Foundation nor potentially as mayor, but as Batman. At Woodrow Roosevelt High, Dick, as president of the student council, finds himself trying to head off a possible student rebellion fomented by the Joker’s sabotage of all of the school’s vending machines (which also dispense stocks and bonds). As one student tells Dick, “The purpose of our studies is to equip us to make our way in life. If, on the other hand, one has merely to insert a dime in a machine . . .” Dick is tasked with defending a primary American institution, the public school, as a vehicle for ideal citizenship (i.e., the development of hardworking citizens). When Dick advises his peers to “wise up, you guys, life isn’t this easy,” Susie retorts, “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You’re the ward of that rich millionaire.” Of course, the only way in which Susie’s class-inflected charge can be mitigated is by two factors: Dick’s secret identity as Robin and Susie’s (soonto-be-revealed) allegiance with the Joker. It is later shown that she is seduced by the Joker’s promises of “the finer things in life” to join his gang of “mostly high school dropouts,” the Bad Pennies. As she tells the Joker, as a member of student council, she can “get away with anything,” marking her cynical perspective on the privileges of the wealthy as inherently deviant. By

19

Chapter 1

20

contrast, we see that Dick’s access to power (both as a president of the student council and as Robin) is never abused, demonstrating the effectiveness of Bruce’s guardianship. Batman arrives at the high school and explains to the students the truly nefarious and subversive nature of the Joker’s plot: “Believe me, this may look like a party but it’s not. There’s a crook behind these handouts . . . [luring] you into a deceptive pattern of easy living. You’ll quit your studies, become dropouts. You’ll have no other recourse but to join criminal groups.” When the Joker suddenly appears at the school, Batman moves to arrest him (“$5,000 fine and five years imprisonment” for loitering on school property). However, the Joker avoids arrest on a legal technically, prompting Batman to fume, “You—you jailhouse lawyer!” As we see in every other episode, while Batman is excessive in his appearance, he always stays within the boundaries of the law when fighting crime. Thus the vigilantism that defined the character in the earliest comic books and was drained from the character over the years is completely absent from the series. As a “duly deputized officer of the law” Batman is firmly ensconced within the structures of state authority. Later, at his hideout at the Easy Living Candy Store, the Joker rewards Susie with jewelry, a fur stole, and “one full quart of imported Mexican perfume.” Clutching the stole to her face, Susie murmurs, “Why, this is like some lovely dream.” While Susie enjoys her aberrant lifestyle with her deviant father figure, we cut to Robin in the Batcave studying for “nationwide precollege exams.” He is assisted by Alfred in solving an algebra equation, confirming the paternal role the butler plays in support of Bruce/Batman. The fact that Dick is studying dressed as Robin and in the Batcave further equates the work that he and Bruce do as superheroes with normative American values of hard work and success. The structures of social hierarchy are not only naturalized in this context—they are made desirable. The dutiful servant helps carry out the beneficent mission of his millionaire employer by assisting in the education of

Batman triumphs over 1960s youth rebellion. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

Bat-Civics

his ward/superhero sidekick. Meanwhile, Susie’s pursuit of the easy life is explicitly coded as a dream, one that the viewer well knows she will soon be awakened from by Batman and Robin. In their actual identities as Bruce and Dick, they represent the “real” American Dream, one that is obviously just as fantastic as Susie’s. Rather than gaining his wealth from hard work, Bruce has inherited it, while Dick has been adopted into it. According to this dynamic, only the most elite class in Gotham City has the ability, the privilege, and the responsibility to become costumed crime fighters. Excessive wealth informs an excessive response to the city’s real problems, which are not traffic jams or water shortages, but villains such as the Joker, who threaten the very integrity of America’s youth. Thus Batman’s project is not just to stop crime but to prevent criminal tendencies from developing in America’s youth,

21

Chapter 1

22

thus satirically linking Batman to the paranoid paternalism of 1950s culture as embodied in the writings of Fredric Wertham, who linked comic books to juvenile delinquency. The value of preventing budding criminal tendencies is reinforced at the end of “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul,” when we see that Susie, talking with Bruce and Dick in the parlor of Wayne Manor, is being taken to the Wayne Foundation for Delinquent Girls by chauffeured limousine. Bruce comforts her, saying it “is hardly a jail,” and Dick chimes in, “Heck no, there are teams and clubs and everything,” equating it with school. A remorseful Susie is consoled by Dick: “Heck, Susie, it wasn’t all your fault. I mean with your unhappy childhood and a broken home and everything. No wonder you fell for that crook’s phony promises.” If Dick is a crime fighter instead of a criminal, it is because he was raised by Bruce in the ideologically secure comforts of Wayne Manor. And if Susie has the opportunity for redemption and rehabilitation it is because the Wayne Foundation is able to protect and realize the national values that the public school represents but cannot always effectively promote. For adult viewers in 1966, the excessive normativity of Batman that is at the heart of its parodic critique allows for a distancing from the excesses of 1950s conformity; that decade’s fears of moral degeneracy seem quaint in comparison to issues in the 1960s. Thus the adult viewer uses this nostalgia to inform crises of the present with even greater urgency. Importantly, the crises of 1960s America are not just those of internal dissention but of the state’s response to it. Batman’s extra-legal status confirms individual power in support of ideal American values but at the expense of the police, who are routinely depicted as incompetent and stupid, particularly as personified by Police Chief O’Hara (Stafford Repp), a well-meaning but dim-witted Irish cop. As he confesses when confounded by the mind-control device of Black Widow in “Black Widow Strikes Again” (15 March 1967), “Me men are clever, goodness knows, but where the human brain is concerned, they’re just not equipped.”

Bat-Civics

In this respect, Batman can be read as a comment on Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which was seen by liberals as a step toward a progressive American utopia, while many conservatives were fearful of a growing welfare state and the privileging of minority rights at the expense of their rights. Batman, of course, plays it down the middle, facilitating ambivalence about both a Great Society and individualism. Thus, as we see in “The Joker Goes to School,” Batman and Robin implicitly work for all members of American society, though the all-white Woodrow Roosevelt High School seems to exist in a segregated American past. Further, they argue against the notion of handouts, that anything in life is free, a common complaint from conservative whites about what this group saw as the “special” rights being accorded minorities and women. Batman allows viewers to accept the noble intentions of the state, personified by the well-meaning figures of Commissioner Gordon, Chief O’Hara, and Warden Crichton (David Lewis), while still privileging the role of the individual (Bruce Wayne/Batman). Yet, the celebration of individualism is highly qualified by its fantastic and silly nature, reflecting ambivalence about the saliency of that particular national myth. Such ambivalence is informed by the cyclical nature of the series, in which neither the state nor criminals ever achieve a final victory. If Bruce Wayne is the idealized normative citizen, both exceptional (in his wealth) and democratic (in his values), Batman is the idealized super-citizen, both exceptional (in his crimefighting abilities) and democratic (in his values). As Batman (with Robin in tow), Bruce Wayne labors for the good of society, constantly thwarting criminals whose primary objective is to subvert the capitalist state. Consequently, free-market capitalism and a class system are naturalized as inevitable and desirable components of a national identity. Only criminal deviants, the Jokers and King Tuts of the world, subvert the utopian dream of consumerism and democracy. Parodying a common trope of American films, television, and comic books, Batman

23

Chapter 1

24

plants the root of social problems in the individual, not institutions. Importantly, institutions of social control are always offered to assist those who, through a deficiency in their character or their mental health, deviate from the social norm. In the episode “Scat! Darn Catwoman” (25 January 1967), Batman, having cornered Catwoman (Julie Newmar) high on a rooftop, offers to “do everything I can to rehabilitate you.” Catwoman proposes marriage as a means of rehabilitation (subverting the naturalization of heterosexual marriage), but Batman, exaggerating the conventions of the comic books (which denied any hint of sexuality), hurriedly declines: “Everything except that. A wife, no matter how beauteous or affectionate, would severely impair my crime fighting.” For Batman, rehabilitation must be exercised through state institutions, not by individuals. (Thus, by extension, his rearing of Dick is remediated as the public enterprise of crime fighting.) Catwoman suggests she can reform and help Batman fight crime. When Batman asks, “What about Robin?” Catwoman blithely suggests they kill him. Batman ruefully concludes, “I see you’re not really ready to assume a life in society.” In a later episode, “Batman Displays His Knowledge” (23 February 1967), Bruce Wayne (Catwoman’s parole officer) and Warden Crichton meet with a recently captured Catwoman. The warden laments to Catwoman, “You have destroyed my faith in my modern penological practices.” Catwoman comfortingly advises him, “Don’t judge all criminals by me, Warden Crichton. There are a lot of cons that you have rehabilitated by your methods. I’m the exception, not the rule.” Bruce Wayne agrees, saying, “Catwoman’s correct. This is a model prison. Be proud of your work, warden.” Importantly, both Batman and Bruce Wayne exist to defend and validate the work of the state; the millionaire scion is as relevant to the city as the superhero. By implication, civic values and great wealth are mutually reinforcing conditions. In Batman the benevolent state cannot rehabilitate all of its deviant citizens; if it could, then the city (and viewers) would

Bat-Civics

not need Batman and Robin. Thus, it requires Batman to meet the threat of extraordinary criminals and Bruce Wayne to help rehabilitate them (either through his institutional care of delinquents or as a parole officer). Batman is defined by his social and legal liminality: he is a deputized officer of the law but operates independently of the police. Further, his bizarre costume links him to the similarly costumed villains he fights; he is defined then by the Otherness of the costume in contrast to the uniform (and uniformity) of the police force. Batman zealously performs the work of the nation, embodying its primary value of individual exceptionalism in defense of its inherent pluralism. Thus, in the figure of Batman the nation produces its own problem (excessive difference) and the solution to that problem. Importantly, this dialogic condition of the nation—its ongoing tension between individualism and the group—corresponds to the requirements of mass culture, which itself necessitates constant renewal and transformation while also maintaining a static condition of constant production and consumption. Predicated on the very idea of personal transformation for the public good, the superhero genre is especially useful for expressing the ambivalences of the nation. Genres, according to Rick Altman, are a reflection of the public sphere and, like that sphere, are open to “redefinition and redeployment.”5 The defining innovation of the show as a genre piece resides in its hybridization of the dramatic actionadventure series with the sitcom. This hybrid quality emphasizes its play with boundaries, enhancing its qualities as a reflection of the inherent pluralism of American society and the pleasures of mass culture. Batman’s hybridity reflects a transitional period in network programming. According to Toby Miller, “The late 1950s and early 1960s on US network TV had been characterised by male action adventure. . . . The mid-1960s on American TV were, however . . . full of situation comedy.”6 Batman thus not only parodies conservative nationalism but the previous generation of television texts that reproduced its hegemonic ideology.

25

Chapter 1

26

Batman is, in this regard, wholly in line with the spy craze of the period, best personified on television by The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 1964–1967), Get Smart (NBC, 1965–1969; CBS, 1969–1970), and I Spy (NBC, 1965–1968), but aimed at legal, police, detective, and even medical dramas. As Ella Taylor observes, by the end of the 1950s, “The television professionals (policemen, detectives, Western lawmen) came to function as agents of the modern social order.”7 Police procedurals like Dragnet (NBC, 1952–1959, 1967–1970) and legal dramas such as Perry Mason (CBS, 1957–1966) presented the ideal laborer for the capitalist state: white male professionals who confirm the legitimacy of hegemonic American values each week. Further, Batman parodically follows a pattern established by The Defenders (CBS 1961–1965), Dr. Kildare (NBC, 1961– 1966), and Ben Casey (ABC, 1961–1966), in which “fantasies of benign omniscience, omnipotence, and devotion to public service . . . endorsed the ideology of the ‘classical’ or ‘free’ professions.”8 As a “duly deputized officer of the law” Batman certainly embodies the paternalistic figure of skilled labor. Yet, if this figure in its original television incarnation is meant to indicate a harmonious relationship between the individual and society, Batman troubles that configuration by being excessively individualistic. The uniform of the police officer, the district attorney, or the surgeon is replaced by a singular costume marked by difference. A sequence in the 1966 feature-length Batman film illustrates how the show’s television genre references commented on the constructed nature of national identity. In the film the Penguin, the Joker, the Riddler, and Catwoman have reduced the members of the United World Security Council to powder using a Total Dehydrator in a scheme to hold the entire world hostage. After the inevitable defeat of the villains, Batman and Robin take the powdered remains of the Security Council (which have been inadvertently mixed together) to the Batcave to be separated and prepared for “rehydration.” Wearing

Bat-Civics

surgical masks, gloves, and smocks over their costumes (but under their capes and, in Batman’s case, under his utility belt), Batman and Robin use the advanced technology in the Batcave to restore the Security Council. In this manner Batman and Robin semantically both invoke and destabilize the familiar figure of the TV surgeon. As they proceed with the delicate operation, with “the hope of the world” hanging in the balance, Batman regularly updates Commissioner Gordon on their progress by Bat-phone. Gordon, meanwhile, is on another line relaying Batman’s messages to the Commander in Chief (though his back is to the camera, his Texas drawl and nearby hunting dogs leave no doubt that this is President Johnson). Gordon’s relays are themselves being televised live, as we see Alfred and Aunt Harriet watching anxiously in the living room of Wayne Manor as the president advises that “the whole free world is waitin’.” The Batcave operation intertwines medical dramas with the television genre of real-life national events, most explicitly the televised launches of manned spaceflights, emphasized when the president asks Gordon, “How those boys doin’ up there?” Batman’s comedic appropriation of these tropes of national crises and the dramatic series needs further consideration as an extension and subversion of the consensus achieved in 1950s television through the ideological intersection of drama and comedy. The generally consensual nature of 1950s television, from Dragnet to Leave it to Beaver (CBS, 1957–1958; ABC, 1958–1963), confirmed the political and cultural conservatism of the era. Both comedies and dramas presented an ostensibly apolitical utopian vision of an America defined by shared middle-class values. Accordingly, what Ella Taylor characterizes as the “ ‘liberal conservative’ spirit”9 of 1950s television promoted an idea of American progress defined by tolerant pluralism best expressed via mass production and consumption. Both participatory democracy and free enterprise are conflated in the production and consumption of a mass culture that glosses over difference and its own internal contradictions by

27

Chapter 1

28

casting a cathode ray–generated image of a postwar American utopia. It is exactly this image that is sustained by the televising of Gordon’s conversation with both Batman and the president of the United States within the film’s diegesis. By extension this process of meaning-making is the subject of this scene on the extra-diegetic register. The parody of the medical drama, inflated as an international political crisis only resolvable by the ideal American hero (Batman tells a nervous Gordon that if he and Robin cannot bring the Security Council back, “heaven knows who can.”), allows the viewer to confirm the absence of a real-life utopia through the safely cathartic act of laughing. The laughter is as much self-directed as it is directed at the expense of the manufacturers of this utopian vision. In this way the parody of the drama series brings together a national audience according to a shared recognition of the failure of utopia rather than its supposed realization, which is informed by a nostalgic desire for its reconstitution. In its genre hybridity and dual address, Batman allows viewers to choose to interpret the series either as a critique or an affirmation of 1950s television’s “ ‘end of ideology’ ” meant to “produce ‘middle classlessness’ ” in which Joe Friday and Ward Cleaver are equal agents in the consolidation of social consensus regarding a benevolent capitalist state.10 Batman confirms the utility of genre not as a static structure but as a dialogic text by which producers and consumers negotiate social meaning and, most significantly, express strong ambivalence about a national identity in a time of increasing cynicism and concomitant nostalgia. This is well illustrated in two episodes, “Hizzonner the Penguin” (2 November 1966) and “Dizzonner the Penguin” (3 November 1966). In this story line, the Penguin goes about Gotham City performing well-publicized good deeds, which compels Commissioner Gordon to contact Batman and Robin. When Bruce Wayne takes his call at Wayne Manor, viewers see that he has just advised Dick Grayson to study for his civics exam. In the lobby of police headquarters Batman and Robin

Bat-Civics

overhear a rumor that the Penguin has announced his candidacy for mayor of Gotham City. Batman reminds an agitated Robin that “it’s a free country.” Robin (now receiving that civics lesson) responds, “It won’t be if he’s elected. Besides, I thought convicted felons were barred from holding any official office.” Batman advises, “I suspect Penguin has done his civics homework well, Robin, and has discovered that paragraph 34-A of the city charter has never been officially repealed. It specifically allows convicted criminals to run for public office.” He goes on to reassure his sidekick, “I don’t think there’s any danger of the Penguin being elected, Robin. The people of Gotham City are not as simple-minded as he might think.” However, as Batman and Robin exit the elevator, its other riders reveal Penguin campaign buttons, and we see a “Vote for Penguin” poster on the elevator doors. Here we see two potential problems within the democratic state that require Batman’s attention: flaws in the legal system and a citizenry susceptible to crass persuasion. In Commissioner Gordon’s office the Dynamic Duo learn from Gordon and Mayor Linseed (a reference to New York City Mayor John Lindsay), that the Penguin has already won the support of various organizations because of his high-profile charitable acts. They are visited by the polling firm of Gallus, Rooper, and Trendek (An anxious Linseed asserts, “They’re never wrong.”), who announce that the Penguin has 60% support to Linseed’s 30% (while the “monarchist candidate” Harry Goldwinner—a reference to Republican hawk and 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater—has 2% support from “two old ladies”). The polling firm is an obvious reference to both the Gallup and Roper polling firms, which often reported on political races, and Trendex, which measured television viewing habits. This linkage suggests that modern-day politics are little more than a televisual experience for many Americans, for whom politicians are a commodity to be rated. Linseed bemoans, “It’s hopeless. I can’t possibly beat the Penguin. He’ll use every underhanded political trick in the book and he probably

29

Chapter 1

30

knows more underhanded tricks than even I know.” This indictment of modern politicians is glossed over by the greater threat of a Penguin candidacy. Gordon, Linseed, and O’Hara offer a solution: that Batman run for mayor (with Linseed on the ticket as deputy mayor) in order to save the city “from the clutches of that feathered fiend.” Batman, reflecting deeply, muses, “To run for mayor of a great American city like this one. It’s a great responsibility but am I worthy of it? . . . Guardian of the people’s trust. No, no, I’m not worthy of it.” Gordon insists, “You’re the only man in Gotham City who is, Batman.” Linseed says imploringly, “We’re the representatives of the people and we call upon you to save Gotham City from the horrible fate of the Penguin as mayor.” Finally, Batman stoically relents: “Very well. I accept the call of the people.” In this scene American politics is represented as a cynical exercise by Linseed, undercutting the solemnity of Batman’s final acquiescence. The rest of the episode extends this theme through the interplay between the Penguin’s exploitation of the electorate and Batman’s expression of righteous democracy. At Penguin campaign headquarters, we find a bevy of pretty young women, colorful signs, and raucous singing. When the Penguin learns that his lead in the polls has vanished because Batman has entered the race, he promises his campaign crew, “We’ll give the voters of this city the kind of campaign they want. Plenty of girls and bands and slogans and lots of hoopla. But remember, no politics. Issues confuse people. So a big smile, hearty handshake, and a very catchy campaign song. That’s the way to win an election!” Meanwhile, at Batman’s campaign headquarters, we find Batman and Robin alone with a few modest campaign posters. Robin wonders if the posters should be larger, but Batman (again administering civics lessons) says, “The voters are interested in issues, not in window dressing. . . . I want to conduct a campaign that deals with the issues. I’m convinced the American electorate is too mature to be taken in by cheap vaudeville

Bat-Civics

31

The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) plots to subvert American democracy. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

trickery. After all, if our national leaders were elected on the basis of tricky slogans, brass bands, and pretty girls, our country would be in a terrible mess, wouldn’t it?” West delivers this last line looking directly into the camera, delivering a broad wink and nudge to his adult viewers. During the campaign when Batman declines to kiss a baby (because “babies that small are very susceptible to germs”) the Penguin successfully paints Batman as a “baby hater.” Having turned away a number of parents from Batman’s rally to his own, the Penguin gleefully notes, “Politics is wonderful. I can use all of

Chapter 1

32

my lowest, slurpiest tricks, but now they’re legal. Oh, I should have been a politician years ago!” The script provides Batman with a tongue-in-cheek retort to this, as he tells Robin “that most politicians are honest servants of the people. The dishonest ones are the exception.” In the following scene the Penguin’s campaign rally proves to be a sensational affair with a belly dancer, the rock band Paul Revere and the Raiders, champagne, a brief song-and-dance number led by the Penguin, and an over-the-top stump speech in which the Penguin proclaims to great cheers that the Penguin party stands for, among other things, mother, country, and the flag. Though now far behind in the polls, Batman maintains his faith in the “good judgment of the people.” Inevitably, Batman wins the election, despite the poll numbers, asserting, “Smart politicians trust the voters, not the polls. After all, if you can’t trust the voters, whom can you trust?” In a desperate attempt to steal the election, the Penguin kidnaps the members of the Board of Election. Batman and Robin rescue the board and apprehend the Penguin, whom we see at the end demanding his “constitutional rights.” Batman promptly resigns as mayor so that Linseed can occupy the office once again. The episode ends with Batman receiving calls from both major parties to run for President of the United States in 1968. A humbled Batman graciously declines, saying, “I’m afraid my Gotham City duties take precedence.” As these episodes demonstrate, Batman debunks what Toby Miller characterizes as “the romance of citizenship” of 1960s action series through parody.11 The show’s hybridization of drama and comedy underscores its ideological ambivalence; it subverts platforms of meaning-making rather than meaning itself. Thus it is a transitional program, popular with a mainstream audience caught between the inertia of nostalgia for the unrecoverable values of the 1950s but not yet fully prepared to wholly reject them. Batman’s satire is thus not overtly political (Consider that topical satire was fatal to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS, 1967–1969.)) but instead self-reflexive

Bat-Civics

(making its formalistic critique more compatible with The Monkees (NBC, 1966–1968) and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (NBC, 1967–1973)). In this way, it is symptomatic of a general sea change occurring in television in the mid-1960s. In this period the weekly drama anthology had disappeared; only a few stalwart Westerns (Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–1975) and Bonanza (NBC, 1959–1973)) remained, following that genre’s highwater mark of the 1950s, and quiz shows had been banished from prime time following the Twenty-One (CBS and NBC, 1956–1958) scandal of 1958, in which fundamental American ideas of economic reward through fair competition were wholly corrupted. Writing of the nostalgic value of television comedy, Roger Silverstone contends that audiences are attracted to “a transcendent hope, a hope and a desire that something will touch us, but similarly, once satisfied, we return to such sites of ‘transcendence’ again and again.”12 An essential value of the laughter generated by Batman is in its reconstitution of the affective nostalgia of utopian citizenship. The most common word used by the show’s guest stars in describing the experience of being on the show was a childlike “fun,” equating the experience of producing the show with that of watching it. Production and consumption practices are bound together by the affect of “fun,” and Batman offers fun as the primary postwar antidote to Cold War anxieties (the twin failures of popular and political cultures). Laughter is thus an affective expression of critical nostalgia, a simultaneous confirmation of loss and a compensation for that loss. This substantiates Jonathan Gray’s claim that parodic laughter, following a key trope of camp, “works to exclude the fearful” as it continually returns us “to sites of affect and joy . . . [which] may well be our own memories.”13 The ability of Batman to be deployed nostalgically to contend with a vexed repository of memories and present-day crises is actualized in a notable incident involving E. William Henry, the head of the Federal Communications Commission

33

Chapter 1

34

from 1963 to 1966. At a benefit event in New York in March 1966, Henry appeared dressed as Batman in a skit written by Art Buchwald in which Batman helps President Johnson resolve the conflict in Vietnam. This performance realizes the value of the superhero as a nostalgic symbol of an ideal American identity. Consequently, any solution to a present-day crisis is marked as unrealistic (that is, strictly fantasy) by this nostalgic invocation of the rescuing superhero. Henry’s performance actualizes what Daniel J. Boorstin famously termed in 1961 the pseudo-event, “a mass self-duping that allows for the maintenance of fantasies to paper over the shortcomings of the world.14 Echoing Boorstin in his review of the show’s debut episode, New York Times critic Jack Gould labeled Batman a “non-event,” saying that “the only way to eradicate the non-event is to let it wear everybody out; the secret answer to camp is exhaustion, not protest.” A media-created sensation such as Batman not only is a pseudo-event, but, going beyond Boorstin’s definition, comments on the pseudo-event, as evidenced by the Penguin’s campaign rally. The value of the pseudo-event resides in its capacity to manage spontaneous events, the realities of an uncontrollable world. Batman was so transparently produced and consumed as a pseudo-event that it could readily be appropriated by public figures to manage significant changes in their lives. Thus, for example, when Henry resigned as FCC chairman in April 1966, his resignation party was Batman-themed and featured napkins reading “Holy Resignation?” By folding it into the televisual text, the political and personal reality of his resignation becomes a fantasy, a pseudo-event that is at once meaningful and unreal. This is also the effect of the Batman/Vietnam skit that Henry performed; it renders this most troubling of spontaneous events— the Vietnam War—unreal. According to Boorstin, “Whenever in the public mind a pseudo-event competes for attention with a spontaneous event in the same field, the pseudo-event will tend to dominate. What happens on television will overshadow what happens off television.”15 Thus, while Vietnam becomes real for

Bat-Civics

Americans when broadcast on the evening news, it simultaneously becomes unreal, yet another program selection. When a comic book character such as Batman appears on television, he simultaneously becomes “real.” In the 1960s home was the site where the consumer-citizen most typically used the televisual text to mediate these contradictions between reality and pseudo-events. Home is the “most real” (that is, the most affectively saturated) space we occupy; hence the value of Wayne Manor and the relationship of Bruce and Dick. Both the space of Wayne Manor and the Bruce/Dick relationship are simultaneously familiar and extraordinary, real and unreal. According to Darrell Y. Hamamoto, postwar television regulated the “affirmative aspects of democratic culture” by relegating them to “the private sphere organized around domestic life.”16 Thus, the nation itself becomes both real and unreal expressly through its domestic remediation on television. Batman is significant for its self-awareness of the fluidity between private and public and its projection of this awareness onto its viewers. This is why emancipatory ideals are remediated positively (and thus contained) by the figure of Bruce Wayne. Emancipation via inherited capitalist wealth is embodied by the Batman persona that Wayne has the luxury of creating. Thus Bruce Wayne’s duty is to maintain a naturalized economic class system, and Batman’s function is to obscure state power as a form of emancipated individualism. Batman as an extra-diegetic signifier confirms emancipatory ideals through the figure’s cultural value as a marker of individualism via the processes of the mass market. This conflation of the individual and the collective is further substantiated by the tropes of television drama and of the superhero genre of individual solutions to social issues. The conflation of state and corporate power is naturalized and commented upon by the bifurcated figure of Bruce Wayne (corporate power) and Batman (corporate-sponsored agency that is authorized by the state). Thus, the work that Batman does is the work of the ideal postwar consumer-citizen made

35

Chapter 1

36

possible by the beneficence of the corporation (Bruce Wayne) and the state (Commissioner Gordon). Further, the show extradiegetically reflects this synthesis of corporation and state by addressing the viewer as a consumer-citizen. This address, in fact, is essential for the show to work as a parody. The show’s parodic register allows it an ideological fluidity consistent with the demands of mass culture as well as those of an emergent multiculturalism that resisted the homogenization of both mass culture and the state. Batman allows both progressives and conservatives to simultaneously critique and endorse the system that sustains their ideologies. The show further confirms the viability and necessity of progressive and conservatives to the other, countervailing forces that require one another for meaning, just as Batman and his villains require one another, and just as society and the individual need one another. Batman thus falls under Hamamoto’s subgenre of the “Kennedy com,” sitcoms that reveal “many of the ambiguities and unresolved dilemmas of liberal democratic ideology” and turn on the notion of “reform liberalism.”17 This is the work of Warden Crichton, with his progressive penological practices, in contrast to the conservative law and order ethos of Gordon and O’Hare, with Batman occupying the ideological space in-between. Batman, then, is a transitional television show pivoting between a moment in American history in which the monolithic and repressive dictates of 1950s citizenship were fracturing under the pressure of their own weight. Batman acknowledges the challenges to liberal democratic ideology while at the same time he confirms their desirability. Ultimately, Batman reflects the central tension between the theory of America and its practice. It is just this tension that contributed to the show’s demise. We see in the program a reflection of an increasingly confused American landscape defined by postwar hyper-consumerism, minority demands for constitutional rights and access to the new middle class, and expanded state power. As a transitional text, Batman necessarily was of temporary value to viewers at

Bat-Civics

37

Bat-stars and stripes forever.

a time in which ideological battle lines were being hardened throughout America. When Batman and Robin contemplate a possible war between the United States and the tiny nation of Belgravia in “Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill” (14 December 1967), Batman looks directly at the camera and gravely intones, “Nobody wants war.” The value of this joke is its opacity; is the

Chapter 1

38

show mocking Vietnam hawks or spoofing the antiwar movement? The following chapter considers how, by the third season, these ambivalences could not be sustained in the midst of an increasing cultural divide in America. By the fall of 1967, the “culture war” was in full swing, and it was a war not even Batman could win.

Chapter 2

Bat-Difference

Dear Batman, Why don’t you have a Batwoman or Batgirl? Is Batman against girls? Love, Susan W., NYC1

T

here is perhaps no more useful lens through which to examine Batman’s struggle to maintain ideological flexibility at a time of seismic changes in American society than that of gender. The dynamic of emergent, dominant, and residual American values activated by viewers’ memories of Batman and shifting ideas regarding national identity inform the show’s representation of gender during a period in which women increasingly mobilized as a political force seeking social and economic equality. If a “cult of masculinity” developed to shore up a cultural image of the American male in the 1950s and 1960s (as evidenced by the proliferation of television Westerns and detective shows), such a cult was increasingly untenable in the face of real social change through the course of the 1960s.2 By the fall of 1967, Batman attempted to reflect and negotiate with such changes by adding Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) to the regular cast of characters. Further, in an acknowledgement

39

Chapter 2

40

of the civil rights movement that was quickly splintering into the black power movement, Eartha Kitt was cast as Catwoman in the series’ third season. Both characters and casting choices speak to the increasing conflation of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and the antiwar movement as a trend of what became known as identity politics and a general counterculture movement. Batman clearly represents a typically belated and problematic response to these cultural changes by the mainstream, speaking to what Stuart Hall sees as “the doublestake in popular culture, the double movement of containment and resistance.”3 The superhero genre traditionally has trafficked in the most reductive gender politics, simplistically designating men as the arbiters of innate moral and physical superiority and women as, at best, rescue objects that exist as reasons for the men to exercise that superiority and, at worst, as sexualized threats to patriarchal power. After Wertham’s charges of latent homosexuality against Batman and Robin in 1954, Batman comic books increasingly featured female characters in a move to dispel any lingering anxiety about life in a secluded mansion with two single men and a teenage boy. At the same, however, women were a danger to the homosocial bond accorded by superhero adventuring and capitalist patriarchy. Thus, in post-Wertham comic books, women are more prominent in Batman comics as romantic threats whose interest in the Caped Crusader endangers his crime-fighting career. In the course of Batman’s run on television, such gender politics underwent a cautious transformation. Clearly the most iconic female character on the show, Catwoman, as portrayed by Julie Newmar, was overtly sexual. With other female villains, the series usually represented women as an often vaguely sexualized threat (more beautiful and glamorous than sexy) primarily motivated by greed, not sex (or the implied sexual thrill of criminal activity that informed Newmar’s performance). In “Marsha, Queen of Diamonds” (23 November 1966) and “Marsha’s Scheme

Bat-Difference

with Diamonds” (24 November 1966), for example, the main villain seems to have stepped straight out of the pages of a 1950s Batman comic book (though the character was original to the series). Marsha (Carolyn Jones) has an irrational and unquenchable desire for diamonds, and she sets her sights on the largest and purest of them all: the Bat-diamond, which is housed in the Batcave and powers the Bat-computer. In pursuit of this oversized bauble, she controls first Chief O’Hara, then Commissioner Gordon, and finally Robin with a love potion developed by her sorceress, Aunt Hilda (who looks and acts like she wandered in from the set of Bewitched (ABC, 1964–1972)). Female power is here

41

Repressed sexuality returns in the fetishized figure of Catwoman (Julie Newmar). (Courtesy of John Stacks)

Chapter 2

42

represented as wholly disruptive to the rational powers of technocratic patriarchal capitalism; Aunt Hilda had been a chemistry professor for twenty years at Vassar before being fired for turning the student body orange. Women are aligned with magic and irrational desire. While Batman uses the Bat-diamond to power the ultimate symbol of rational masculine authority, Marsha wants to possess it simply for the sake of having it. Marsha’s threat is increased by her primary strategy— controlling men’s wills through the love potion. Tellingly, her attempt to subdue Batman in this manner fails; he has the willpower to resist what Dozier in his voice-over narration calls the “powers of darkness.” To be seduced (by whatever means) by a woman is actually described by Robin as a “fate worse than death.” Such dialogue certainly plays with the gay subtext of the Batman comics; later, after Batman narrowly avoids wedding Marsha, we see Batman and Alfred speed away from a church, the Batmobile trailing tin cans and adorned with a “Just Married” sign. But the episodes’ main concerns are with playing up the comic books’ gender binaries. With an enamored Robin as her emotional hostage, Marsha demands that Batman take her to the Batcave so that she may personally purloin the Bat-diamond. The invasion of this seat of male homosocial power by a woman leaves Batman aghast. He feverishly exclaims, “That’s impossible . . . I made a sacred vow that no stranger would ever enter the Batcave” (never mind that in another episode, Batman allowed Commissioner Gordon into the Batcave). To get around his protest, Marsha proposes that she and Batman wed; as “Mrs. Batman” she cannot be considered a stranger and thus may enter the Batcave. Batman visibly recoils when Marsha says, “I’ll be perfectly happy to spend my honeymoon in the Batcave.” Yet, for the sake of Robin, he reluctantly agrees to her demands. The integrity of heterosexual marriage is maintained in this story line by a later scene in which O’Hara and Gordon discuss how they will explain their forced devotion to Marsha to their

Bat-Difference

43

Batman faces his ultimate threat—marriage to Marsha, Queen of Diamonds (Carolyn Jones). (Courtesy of John Stacks)

wives. Marriage, in other words, is an expected normative condition of state authority and one that is policed by wives, to whom men willingly submit. However, for Batman marriage is a deadly threat to his very integrity. Thus the first episode’s cliffhanger in this story line is of Batman at the altar with Marsha

Chapter 2

44

about to say “I do.” Alfred comes to his rescue at the last second, falsely presenting Aunt Harriet as the original and still legally wed “Mrs. Batman,” maintaining masculine allegiances and the utility of women as tools in the service of patriarchy. After Batman cures O’Hara, Gordon, and Robin of the love spell (using a Bat-antidote developed in the Batcave), Gordon openly frets over Batman’s newest challenge: “Batman and Robin can handle any male criminal in Gotham City, but when it comes to women. . . .” In his voice-over narration, Dozier extends the domain of male homosociality and reinforces the notion that a female villain’s primary weapon is her gender when he implores, “Be careful, Batman. There are some mysteries no man can solve.” Yet, as Batman reassures Gordon, “Occasionally we men come up with a few tricks, too, Commissioner.” After Marsha’s defeat at the hands of Batman, we see the exercise of institutional patriarchal power in the epilogue. Aunt Hilda is given a job teaching cooking at Bruce Wayne’s School of Home Economics, literalizing the powers of inscription that patriarchy holds over women. Looking on with a condescending mixture of amusement and benevolence, Dick says, “All the time Aunt Hilda was a frustrated cook,” and Bruce replies, “Yes, I think she’ll be much happier with her recipes than with her potions.” Patriarchal order is restored, women are literally in their place (prison or cooking class), and the equilibrium of heterosexual marriage is restored. This highly conservative containment of women is in line with the show’s most constant depiction of a woman, the kindhearted but dull Aunt Harriet, who treats Bruce and Dick like little boys (making those characters even more identifiable to children). On one level (as inspired by Wertham), Aunt Harriet exists to pacify any fears of homosexuality in Wayne Manor, but her complete ignorance about Bruce and Dick’s secret lives actually confirms the possibility of their homosexuality. This is consistent with the double register and general ambiguities and ambivalences of the series, an ethos that is strained by the

Bat-Difference

producers’ attempts to appeal to the growing women’s rights movement of the period. Much of the show’s ambiguity and ambivalence is centered around the emancipatory ideals of the nation, which are contained by their remediation via the exceptional producer-citizen (Bruce Wayne) and the deviant consumer-citizen (all of the villains). The problems of modern democratic capitalism are located within excessively aberrant individuals, not inherent to the corporate state itself, which produces its own excessive solution, Batman. Accordingly, the real-life “threat” of emancipatory ideals that are increasingly in the spotlight in America by September 1967 are rendered moot. They are not threatening because they are managed by the corporate state in the figure of Batman. Thus, Batgirl is the typical distaff iteration of the male superhero, the female derivative who owes her identity and her agency to the patriarchal superhero. (She is, after all the “girl” to his “man.”) On an extra-diegetic level the casting of Eartha Kitt as Catwoman safely contains the “threat” posed by emancipatory ideals because this casting ostensibly confirms the sustenance of these ideals within the corporate-state structure. To simply feature Kitt in race-neutral terms as one in a line of actresses playing this role is to theoretically realize the emancipatory potential of the corporate-state. At issue here, however, is the collision between democracy and capitalism, highlighted by what Hamamoto calls “the expansion of democratic principles and concomitant growth of the welfare state in the postwar era,” which increasingly became a topic of concern for the American sitcom.4 Because these changes worked in part to actualize the promises of liberal democracy and thus threatened hegemonic power structures, they were incorporated into mass culture. Thus, full democratic participation is equated with and obscured by career success and economic mobility in sitcoms such as That Girl (ABC, 1966–1971) and Julia (NBC, 1968–1971). Batman validates the “necessity” of a patriarchal corporate-state, one that requires the

45

The female superhero Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) is legitimated by the paternalistic presence of Batman. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

Bat-Difference

participation of all as consumer-citizens but in unequal capacities. At the same time, in expanding its gender and racial inclusiveness, the show attempted to appeal to emancipatory ideals. Because this appeal was necessarily highly regulated by the more conservative demands of hegemony, the show succeeded in this third season only in isolating both the status quo and the counterculture: it was not conservative enough for one camp and not progressive enough for the other. The more the realities of social inequality and injustice were glossed over by a monolithic vision of prosperity (dominating the national psyche like the Bat-signal looming over Gotham City), the more evident the flaws in the system. And the more readily viewers were prepared to respond in their own terms. If post–World War II television was heavily invested in the “aesthetic conventions of ‘capitalist realism,’ ” then the shifting reception of Batman indicated the degree to which that aesthetic could no longer paper over the actual failures of capitalist democracy.5 By 1967 Batman was liminally situated amidst a shifting perspective away from the postwar utopic vision of democratic capitalism. As such it could uncritically incorporate conventions of “capitalist realism” in the inclusion of supposed gender parity with the introduction of Batgirl and of ostensible racial equality in the casting of Kitt (the “race-blind” casting problematically equating the commodity status of the black actor to that of the white ones). The show also realized the vision of prosperity through its hyper-commodification and brief but intense popularity. Yet, the accelerated nature of that commodification and consumption informed challenges to the hegemony of capitalist realism. The emerging notion of gender equality in American society was quickly and easily reduced to the realm of labor and capital, a point of convergence between the goals of government, capitalism, and feminism. The National Organization for Women (NOW) in fact formed in 1966 “to advance the economic interests of newly mobilized middle-class, college-bred

47

Chapter 2

48

women.”6 As Patricia Bradley observes, “Job equity . . . came to be the major definer of the second wave’s entire meaning.”7 Such equity is the impetus behind the creation of Batgirl, a figure who could ostensibly demonstrate gender equity in the workplace but who also was contained and disciplined by the rigors of entrenched patriarchy. The tensions produced by the increasing presence of women in the postwar workplace demonstrated the incompatibility of patriarchal capitalism and liberal democracy. Thus Batman displaces both patriarchal power and equal opportunity in the intersecting zones of fantasy and parody, sustaining ambivalence about each at a time in which Americans were increasingly invested in asserting oppositional ideological positions. Batgirl first appeared in the opening episode of Season 3, “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin” (14 September 1967). In his opening voice-over narration, Dozier promises the viewer, “Every day in Gotham City brings new surprises, but this day’s going to top them all. Although it begins none too differently, just wait, just wait!” The realization of his promise is not the overly formulaic story line, this time about the Penguin’s plan to gain immunity from his crimes by marrying the daughter of Police Commissioner Gordon, Barbara, who is recently returned to Gotham after graduating from college. The real surprise is that Barbara is, in fact, secretly a crime fighter herself: Batgirl. The introduction of Barbara Gordon is heavily qualified by her initial function as a rescue object and a pawn in the unending battles between men. The introduction of Batgirl is also qualified by her complete dependence on Batman as a model. Further, her identity is discovered by Alfred, who agrees to keep her secret “as a gentleman.” Thus the implicit threat of the female crime fighter is contained by Alfred’s knowledge of her dual identities. This maintains Batgirl’s mystery for everybody else, especially Batman and Robin, while keeping it within the purview of patriarchal authority via Alfred as a proxy for Bruce Wayne.

Bat-Difference

While Batgirl is modeled after Batman, Barbara is significantly different from Bruce Wayne in that she is not privileged with a vast family fortune; she has a modest if respectable job as a librarian. Thus her crime-fighting efforts are comparatively humble, indicating her limited agency within capitalism, which itself reflects the similar status of young women entering the workplace at this time. Instead of a Batcave under a stately manor, she has a “secret closet” in her apartment. Whereas Bruce and Dick instantly transform into Batman and Robin when they slide down the Bat-poles, Barbara must retreat to a hidden dressing room where she goes through the laborious process of changing outfits. Instead of a Batmobile, Batcomputer, and other sophisticated technological gadgets that confirm patriarchal capital, she has a vanity and a Batgirl-cycle. Instead of a ward and crime-fighting sidekick, she has a pet bird. Central to Barbara’s creation of the Batgirl persona is her relocation to the city. Her transformation in Gotham City relates to what Moya Luckett calls “the period’s single-girl myth, in which the big city stands for freedom, choice, possibilities, and adventures unfettered by social and moral restrictions.”8 This myth competed with media coverage of urban crime; the narrative of the rape and/or murder of a young woman in the city was a familiar one in the 1960s. This is most famously evident in the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, a young New Yorker murdered while dozens of her neighbors looked on (and of course the figure of the superhero savior is as much a response to the perceived indifference of the modern urbanite as it is to criminals themselves). Barbara Gordon’s ability to create a Batgirl persona speaks to the freedom of the city; the necessity of such a persona calls up the dangers of the city. The fantasy space of Gotham City both confirms the threats of the real-life big city to single women (especially crime) but also dispels them through their fantastical representation (both the supervillain threat and the Batgirl persona).

49

Chapter 2

50

If, according to Katherine J. Lehman, the city offered the opportunity for the young single female college graduate “to meet eligible men and freedom from parental oversight—as well as opportunities to develop new personal and professional identities,” then Barbara Gordon’s relationship to Gotham City is further vexed.9 The city is both the location of this potential freedom (as represented by Batman, the figure of excess produced by the city) and its containment (managed by her father, the police commissioner). Further, whereas the city potentially offered young women in 1960s America a new degree of sexual freedom (significantly, the first birth control pill was marketed in America in 1960), the strictures of the superhero genre and the network sitcom form prohibited any sexual agency on the part of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. Thus the double patriarchs Commissioner Gordon and Batman regulate female sexuality, a function they ritualistically carry out in their constant recontainment of Catwoman. Consistent with the super­hero genre’s repression of sex, sexuality is exclusively both female and criminal. As a conservative antidote, Batgirl is necessarily asexual. Importantly, whereas the discourse on the new single woman focused on the notion of the young woman moving away from her parents in the small town or rural area to a big city, Barbara Gordon is in fact returning home from college. Thus her “independence” and new identity reaffirm domesticated gender roles. While her agency, however qualified, could be regarded as progressive in comparison to the housewife figure of the 1950s sitcom, it is also potentially troubling. One of the common tropes of a new wave of 1960s sitcoms that featured “working girls” making their way in the big city (e.g., That Girl) was the challenge for the protagonist to separate her professional and personal lives. That is, the “problem” is that by working, the protagonist threatens her traditional identity as a woman. The conceit of the superhero allows Barbara Gordon to solve this dilemma, though the solution is at the cost of open agency. That

Bat-Difference

is, in order to participate in crime fighting, a position on the police force is implicitly unavailable to her. This is confirmed in “Louie the Lilac” (26 October 1967) when Barbara tells Alfred that she did not share with her father her suspicions about the criminal Louie because she was sure he would not take her seriously. Her containment within conventional gender roles is also reinforced by the fact that her job as a librarian is a stereotypical female occupation. In his voice-over introduction to a short film made to sell ABC on the idea of Batgirl, Dozier intones, “Gotham City, like any other large metropolis, abounds in girls of all shapes and sizes. Debutants, nurses, stenographers, and librarians.” These are all highly stereotypical female roles, rendering Batgirl even more powerful in comparison. Yet, again and again her agency is limited by its qualification as “feminine.” Later Dozier’s narration describes Batgirl’s “own beguiling, beautiful way” and ends the short film by describing this new character as “just plain Barbara Gordon, masquerading for a lark” and as a “dazzling dare-doll.” To fight crime, she has to don a disguise and follow in the footsteps of a male superhero. In this way, Batman follows the trend of integration seen in police shows of the period, such as The Mod Squad (ABC, 1968–1973) with its unrealistic depiction of a trio of “hippie” teenagers (“One White, One Black, One Blonde” went the tagline) who work undercover for the police. By locating a comparable assimilation in the realm of superhero fantasy, Batman even further distances this integration from reality. Further, this integration is very limited. Batgirl is never privy to the Batcave or the secret identities of Batman and Robin and, like Robin, she frequently serves as a rescue object for Batman. Because of her construction as a female derivative of the Caped Crusader, Batgirl is allowed access to Commissioner Gordon’s office. As with Batman’s acceptance of her presence on the streets of Gotham, Batgirl is approved by the state, in part because she never threatens patriarchal authority. Instead she is wholly subservient to it.

51

Chapter 2

52

This is underscored by the fact that only Alfred knows Barbara’s secret and that through his privileged access to the Batcave (a fact he never reveals to Barbara/Batgirl) he is able to assist her. In “Louie the Lilac” Barbara is given a tip about the villain’s location from Alfred, using information he gleans from the Batcomputer. When she pointedly asks him about his source, Alfred is evasive, protecting the secret of the patriarch’s dual identity. Masculine authority always retains an advantage over female agency. In “The Funny Feline Felonies” (28 December 1967), Batman marvels at Batgirl’s ability to know about the cases he and Robin are working on (the result not only of her access to Alfred but to her father as well). She sarcastically replies, “Tea leaves, stars, crystal gazing. All part of a woman crime fighter’s arsenal, Batman.” Part of Barbara’s disguise as Batgirl is the performance of female stereotypes, which she uses as a tongue-in-cheek defense against the secret of her actual agency. After she departs, Batman explains to his sidekick, “She’s a woman, Robin, with a woman’s inborn desire to outsmart men. ‘Tea leaves, crystal gazing, stars.’ I wonder what she’ll come up with next.” Batman naturalizes Batgirl’s desire to compete with the Dynamic Duo and dismisses her glib evasion, thus asserting his innate superiority over her. However, simultaneously she remains mysterious to Batman and Robin, who know nothing of her origin or secret identity. Barbara’s creation of the Batgirl persona makes concrete the division between the personal and the professional. The Batgirl persona also more directly aligns Barbara with viewers’ desires and regulates the inherent contradictions of capitalism. If one cannot become a playboy millionaire, then one can at least enjoy the pleasures offered by mass culture: to symbolically transform oneself, translating consumption into production. As a more ordinary person than Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon transforms herself into Batgirl, thereby confirming the central value of the superhero as a fantasy self to fans. Consequently, much as West and Ward’s off-screen personas were nearly

Bat-Difference

53

Craig performs the integration of producer and consumer.

subsumed into the iconicity of their characters, Craig failed to achieve any significant celebrity status. As a neophyte actor appearing on the show during the ratings slide of the third season, Craig was doubly handicapped. As a publicity photograph of her reading a Batgirl comic book story indicates, her primary

Chapter 2

54

off-screen value was as a stand-in for female viewers, reflecting the desire for transformation integral to the nation and mass culture. Thus, she serves as a model for “safe” transformation (that is, change that is shaped according to the standards of patriarchal capitalism) in contrast to the “threatening” changes proposed by the women’s rights movement. Batgirl reifies that desire for transformation each time she retreats to the secret room in her apartment. Yet, at the same time, desire is disciplined by social forces. She models herself after Batman but is also resolutely marked as feminine. As Craig recalled, “Batgirl was not to do any martial arts–type stuff” because line producer Howie Horwitz thought “it wasn’t ladylike. . . . I was (only) allowed to kick the bad guys in a sort of high-kick ballet manner.”10 The distinctly different representation of a female superhero undermines any claims to equality and also attempts to create or redirect female viewers’ identification; Dozier was reportedly motivated by market research to expand the appeal of the show to young girls.11 An article in The Chicago Tribune (November 10, 1967), quoted an executive at Licensing Corporation of America who reasoned that Batgirl would “give the girls something to buy.”12 According to Craig, “Mr. Dozier and Howie told me that the character was aimed at a pre-pubescent female audience and an over-40 male audience. . . . It turned out they were right. Whenever I did public appearances, it was the little girls who came up to me. Once one of them said to me, ‘Miss Craig, from now on, every time I see someone kicked in the face, I’ll think of you.’ ”13 Both demographic targets, men over 40 and young girls, confirm the value of Batgirl to legitimize patriarchy for a group of viewers who constitute it and to naturalize it for a set of viewers learning their social role in relation to it. Barbara’s power is made most conditional by her incentive to become Batgirl. Unlike Bruce, who is motivated by the murder of his parents to become a costumed crime fighter, no explicit reason is given for Barbara’s assumption of the Batgirl guise. Like Robin, she is denied an individual motivating

Bat-Difference

device.14 Rather, she is dutifully following in the footsteps of Batman, not under his direct tutelage, as Robin is, but just as dependent on him for the meaning and value of what she does. In this respect, far from articulating any social critique, Batgirl serves to pacify anxieties about an emergent women’s rights movement and reinforce the hegemonic position of privileged whites. As Hamamoto notes, in postwar America, class tensions are disguised as “questions of professionalism, technocratic advantage, and administrative (i.e. managerial) competence.”15 If more radical feminists and minorities criticized NOW as simply a voice for white, middle-class women and not oppressed minorities, then Barbara Gordon is the paragon of white, middle-class female privilege. Freshly graduated from college, the daughter of the police commissioner has the racial and economic advantages to both hold a white-collar job and be a superhero. Barbara’s social position contributes to understanding the social forces that shaped the conception of Batgirl. She is not responding to social problems but is inspired by Batman to fight crime, and crime is represented as a social problem manifested by individuals, not the result of an institutional system of oppression. Barbara’s decision to serve her city by becoming Batgirl supports institutional systems of control as well as the myth of individualism, just as do the roles of Batman and Robin. As the exceptional individual woman, Batgirl reassures the viewer that she is not the representative for a new generation of politically conscious women. The “girl” in her name sets the limits for her presence in the narrative. She ballet kicks the criminals, always performing the female difference to Batman and Robin. It was not until 1974, six years after the series had been cancelled, that Batgirl’s potential as a symbol for female equality was even prohibitively utilized. In a Department of Labor public service announcement, Batgirl (Craig) bursts into a room where Batman (Dick Gautier) and Robin (Ward) are tied up and about to be killed by a time bomb. Before saving the

55

Chapter 2

56

Dynamic Duo, Batgirl lectures Batman: “I’ve worked for you a long time and I’m paid less than Robin. . . . Same job, same employer means equal pay for men and women.” Batman cautions Batgirl that it is “no time for jokes,” while Robin exclaims “Holy discontent!” When Batgirl replies, “It’s no joke; it’s the federal equal pay law,” Robin says, “Holy act of Congress!” and rolls his eyes. A voice-over by Dozier ends the piece on a cliff-hanger, equating the drama of equal pay with the threat of Batman and Robin’s destruction: “Will Batgirl save the Dynamic Duo? Will she get equal pay?” Significantly, this explicit engagement with issues of gender equality was a belated political use of Batgirl by the federal government. As much as Batgirl functions to deny the problem of sexism on the show (even as her presence offers a solution to it), she also mediates the perceived threat of feminism to “traditional” American values. Mainstream news coverage of feminism in this period typically reduced the movement to narratives about the breaking of boundaries, rather than a consideration of what motivated such “transgressions.” Therefore, the introduction of Batgirl on Batman focuses implicitly on her violation of norms as, paradoxically, an affirmation of their desirability. Batgirl marks female agency as purely individualistic and exceptional. In “The Ogg Couple” (21 December 1967), for example, Batman counsels Batgirl that “perhaps crime fighting is better left to the men, perhaps not. But this isn’t exactly women’s work.” Batgirl retorts, “But I’m no ordinary woman, Batman.” In this way, the trope of the superhero appeals to feminist ideals while it also contains them; individualism as a national value is available to all men but only to some women. Batgirl follows the male superhero and is the symbolic and actual daughter of patriarchal authority (Batman and Commissioner Gordon as co-fathers). Importantly, Batgirl validates the ideology of the family in postwar American culture. The pursuit of individual goals evidenced by the new career woman are displaced in Batgirl by the satisfaction of civic duty assimilated within the

Bat-Difference

structure of a symbolic Bat-family and aligned with the career of her actual father. In contrast, “radical” feminism is depicted as criminal in “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club” (18 January 1968). The episode opens with a banquet honoring Commissioner Gordon for his years of service (a celebration of entrenched institutional patriarchy). We see Mayor Linseed being harangued by his wife (with comical music suggesting that she speaks in a shrill tone) before he takes the podium. Linseed presents Gordon with a gold watch in honor of his service (with Bruce Wayne looking on, the self-affirmation of patriarchal power) and then reluctantly announces, “Due to circumstances beyond my control,” (sideways glance at his wife) “that is, due to overwhelming considerations, I hereby discharge Commissioner Gordon. And in his stead I appoint as the new police commissioner of Gotham City Miss Nora Clavicle.” A smartly but conservatively dressed woman (Barbara Rush) enters, accompanied by two scantily clad blonds, one striking a drum with “Woman Power” written on its skin. Bruce ominously utters “Famous Nora Clavicle” while Barbara Gordon comments bitterly, “I didn’t realize her crusade for women had gone this far.” By making a benign father figure for the city (and actual father for Barbara) the target of a “woman’s crusade,” this episode immediately positions feminism as radical and irrational, a threat to nation and family. At the podium, Nora proclaims, “As the new police commissioner I plan to carry on my crusade for women’s rights and to prove that women can run Gotham City better than men, much better.” Subsequently, she replaces Chief O’Hara with Mayor Linseed’s wife as part of a mass firing of the men on the police force, replacing them with women. In this episode, Batman expresses the most vivid fears of white, male hegemony— that white men will be displaced from positions of authority and power by a “radical minority.” The narrative focus on Nora’s drastic measures discourages the viewer from questioning the

57

Chapter 2

58

fact that in order for such a gesture to be so radical, Gotham’s police department must be overwhelmingly male to begin with. The implication is that such a gender disparity should be an acceptable condition, and its restoration becomes part of Batman’s goal by the episode’s conclusion. In her ultimate assault on patriarchal power, Nora calls Batman on the hot-line in the commissioner’s office to inform him, “You can take an extended vacation. We girls are handling things now and we won’t need any help from you men, bat or otherwise.” She then cuts the phone line with a pair of scissors, punctuating her symbolic bat-castration. It is quickly revealed that Nora’s plans are more nefarious than enforced gender reparations. Her takeover of city hall is part of a larger plan to destroy the entire city and collect on a massive insurance policy. With a viable criminal threat at hand, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl are mobilized into action. Unfortunately, they receive no support from the police because, in contradiction to her stated belief in female superiority, the female officers are, by Nora’s own design, unable to fulfill their duties. Thus she is able, for example, to orchestrate a bank robbery in the middle of the day while the female bank guard inside is applying makeup and two police officers outside are preoccupied with sharing recipes. A fourth officer refuses to chase the robbers for fear of damaging her designer shoes. Finally, at police headquarters, the officer monitoring the police radio is too busy listening to reports of department store sales to quickly broadcast a report on the robbery. Nora’s ultimate goal, to destroy Gotham City, also depends upon highly stereotypical behavior by the all-female police department. She sends scores of mechanical mice throughout the city, each one carrying an explosive charge timed to detonate simultaneously. Batgirl, the exceptional woman, ably and unquestioningly assists Batman and Robin in thwarting the plot, even commenting derisively, “I might have known. You can’t get police women to help you catch mice.” Batgirl confirms her own separation from “typical”

Bat-Difference

female behavior but as a means of reasserting conventional gender roles. This episode presents feminism as nothing more than dogma used by a criminal to trick women into usurping their social station at the peril of an entire city. Indeed, the implicit threat of an all-female police force is the very destruction of American society. Female agency is only safe when it is located in a single exceptional individual (the literal daughter of patriarchy) and kept from the masses. Batgirl’s function throughout this episode is to remind viewers of this ideological position. At no point are Nora’s claims about female empowerment given any validity, even when expressed by more sympathetic characters, such as the mayor’s wife. Female agency is the privilege of Barbara Gordon only, and it can only be expressed on the register of fantasy and at the expense of one’s real identity. Craig herself expressed her disappointment with how the character was written, saying, “I would like to have made Batgirl more acerbic, the way she was written in the 15-minute (sic) presentation film we made for the network. . . . She ended up being this cute little bland character, when she could have been more in the style of Katharine Hepburn.”16 Batgirl ultimately occupies a position somewhere between the highly caricatured normativity of Aunt Harriet and the subversive sex appeal of Catwoman. Batgirl is the attractive alternative to heteronormative regulation and is the requisite counterpart to the troubling deviant female. Writing of representation in film comedy, Geoff King observes, “The unruly woman represents a more serious challenge (than the unruly man) to the gender hierarchies on which so many social relationships are based.”17 Thus, by virtue of gender politics alone, Catwoman is always more threatening than the Joker or the Riddler; however, if Catwoman is the show’s most vivid and constant representation of the unruly woman, it is necessary to account for the ways in which her unruliness was managed, for we find different strategies and, subsequently, diverse outcomes regarding

59

Chapter 2

60

the representation of this character when portrayed by different actresses. For Julie Newmar, Catwoman was a relatively conventional, albeit witty, performance of “naughty” femininity. Newmar characterized her unique balance of comedy and sex appeal as “just the right amount of aggression and seduction and sassiness.”18 Her Catwoman was, physically, pure burlesque bordering on drag performance. She wore the skintight Catwoman costume like a second skin she couldn’t wait to shed from her voluptuous 5’11” frame. In a 1989 interview, Newmar observed, “Catwoman was a rapscallion—she was into being no good. She wasn’t like the heroes in that era, who tended to be either black or white and were very sappy—they represented to me the blokes in Washington who kept saying that Vietnam was good for us, that we should keep sending troops in.”19 Yet this anti-patriarchal quality is muted on the show by Catwoman’s conventionally sexualized representation and the character’s repeatedly expressed desire to marry Batman. If Newmar felt that her character was a liberating foil to reductive masculinist national policy, those qualities were tightly regulated by the conservative social devices of network television. Catwoman took on an entirely different dimension when the role was recast in the third season. With Newmar unavailable (She was shooting the feature film Mackenna’s Gold.), the producers turned to sultry African American singer and dancer Eartha Kitt. While Kitt only appeared as Catwoman in three episodes—and those during the ratings slump of the third season—her strong association with the character indicates the impact of her portrayal. Her casting speaks to long-standing associations between African American performers, especially women, and the sexually exotic Other. Assistant Executive Producer Charles FitzSimons said, “We felt it was a very provocative idea. She was a cat woman before we ever cast her as Catwoman. She had a cat-like style. Her eyes were cat-like and her singing was like a meow. This came as a wonderful off-beat idea to do it with a black woman.”20 Kitt’s exoticism was enhanced

Bat-Difference

61

The exotic black performer (Eartha Kitt) adds another layer of Otherness to Catwoman. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

not only by her racial identity (Her mother was black and her father was white.) but by her successful efforts to establish a career in Europe, where she sang in French and Turkish, before finding success in the States. Accordingly, her identity as an artist was cast in terms of European high culture, safely removing

Chapter 2

62

her from direct associations with an African American experience of the 1960s. And if, as a singer, she became the “safe” African American that whites could embrace because she had successfully assimilated into a particular niche of bourgeois culture, then this dynamic was mainstreamed through her casting as Catwoman. Further, her entry into the fantasy fold of Batman extended her agency as an African American as comparably fantastic, a utopian conceit best realized on and through television. Kitt’s casting occurred during a period in which the networks tried to negotiate the tense border between residual conservatism and emergent progressivism concerning race. While in the 1950s the networks were fearful of being associated with an emerging civil rights movement, by the mid-1960s, they cautiously acknowledged a black viewership.21 When CBS president Frank Stanton “called upon broadcasters to launch a ‘mighty and continuing editorial crusade’ in support of civil rights” in July 1964, he was aligning mass culture with Lyndon Johnson’s vision of a Great Society of equal economic opportunity for all Americans and the explicit message of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.22 Stanton’s appeal emphasized the value of African Americans as subjects of news editorials and documentaries at that time; that is, as rescue objects in narratives of social problems, not as equal professionals in the medium. In such programming African Americans were often represented as victims of racial oppression, most typically in stories of the civil rights movement and the South. Otherwise news coverage of African Americans frequently presented them as criminal perpetrators of urban violence, as seen with news coverage of the Watts Riots in 1965, or as a militarized political threat (e.g., the Black Panthers). In this context, Kitt’s casting as Catwoman takes on added significance, for it potentially confirms what Hamamoto terms the myth of the inherent fairness of liberal democracy.23 In this respect, Kitt’s casting should be understood in relation to Graeme Turner’s contention that “the celebrity generates para-social interactions” that

Bat-Difference

allow audiences to negotiate their social identities.24 For if, as Karen Sternheimer reminds us, “historically, both the American Dream and celebrity status were considered the purview of whites,” a figure such as Kitt allows us to see how the superhero fantasy can be appropriated for politically progressive aims or for recontainment of the culturally “dangerous” body.25 Typical of the casting of guest villains, Kitt’s extra-diegetic persona was an ever-present reminder to audiences of her function as a performer outside the context of Batman. This awareness, along with the show’s parodic register and fantasy milieu, ostensibly relieves Kitt of the burden of representing “blackness” on television, as was common with most African American performers at this time. The fact that the show reflexively emphasized its own playful nature encouraged viewers to see Kitt without the weight of representation. From this perspective, her casting represents the most positive aspects of a subversive camp sensibility: the use of mass culture in order to deconstruct its hegemonic ideology. According to the dictates of superhero fantasy and camp’s denial of crisis, Kitt’s performance as Catwoman liberates the black body from the burdens of social and political signification. At the same time, however, she can never fully evade that significance; thus she is marked as a liminal figure whose presence on the show evokes the very element of racial inequality she is meant to deny. Kitt disciplines two socially containing stereotypes prevalent in 1960s America: the unruly woman and the unruly Negro. Her presence on Batman becomes the primary strategy by which she offers a model of change. Her casting becomes both symptomatic of the need for social change and the change itself. Thus Batman neatly allows viewers to critique society and participate in its improvement. Her racial identity is both relevant to the show’s camp ethos and controlled by the strictures of parody and fantasy, which, by definition, confirm the limits of real-life agency for African Americans; that is, this agency is only available to a black woman

63

Chapter 2

64

in the context of parody (which necessarily names a lack in society) and the superhero fantasy. Further, Batman’s emphasis on play, that the performers are having as much fun playing these roles as the viewers are watching them, works in concert with Kitt’s existing persona as a “safe” black performer. Kitt’s performance allowed audiences to express their ambivalence about the “unruly” black woman because the narrative structure of the show promised two things: that she would be contained and disciplined by white patriarchy at the end of each episode and that she would inevitably return to once again playfully transgress social boundaries. According to Stanley Ralph Ross, who wrote all but two of the 15 episodes featuring Catwoman, “I liked to write the Catwoman shows because I wrote this underlying sexual tension between Batman and Catwoman.”26 Catwoman’s sexuality works in concert with Kitt’s racial identity to compound and complicate audience ambivalence. While her onstage persona was that of a seductive chanteuse, Kitt said that her favorite role was that of Catwoman because “I didn’t have to think about her, I just did it. I didn’t try to be sexy or anything.”27 Kitt frequently recalled how her biracial identity marginalized her as a child and how she eventually found refuge on the stage. She often spoke of her onstage persona as a dual identity, saying, for example, “I don’t want to dress up unless you put me in Eartha Kitt paraphernalia and put me on stage—okay, I’m on duty now.”28 For Kitt, who felt both the freedom and the burden of her public persona, a role such as Catwoman allowed her as a performer to temporarily escape the double burden of representation that came from being a biracial woman. In Kitt’s first appearance as the character, “Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill” (14 December 1967), Ross retains some of the sexual attraction that existed between Batman and Catwoman when Newmar played her, while modifying her dialogue to better complement Kitt’s persona. In this episode Catwoman plans to steal and ransom the Golden Fleece, a solid gold garment

Bat-Difference

owned by Queen Bess of Belgravia. Much of the episode functions to contain Catwoman within the boundaries of stereotypical feminine behavior. It opens at a “posh, private luncheon [where] the city’s ten best dressed women are being named by the town’s top couturier, Rudi Gernreich.” There is an underlying critique of class difference in a scenario that directly places the mostly white (one of the ten women receiving an award is black) representatives of privileged, bourgeois society in conflict with the black criminal. This is redirected by the script’s emphasis on gender stereotypes, however. After presenting his final award, Gernreich announces a surprise: he is giving the first annual “Batty” award for “best dressed crime fightress in Gotham City” to Batgirl. Catwoman interrupts the proceedings, hissing, “How can Batgirl be the best anything when Catwoman is around? No best dressed list is complete without the addition of the queen of criminals, the princess of plunder, yours untruly.” Before exiting, she tosses a “hair-raising bomb” at the ten winners—“Then we’ll see who’s the fairest of them all,” she quips—ruining their hair. Batgirl later offers, “Ruin their hair forever? Catwoman really knows a woman’s weak spot.” This opening establishes Catwoman’s vanity, not greed (or sexual thrill-seeking), as her primary motivation. As Commissioner Gordon says, her desire to become the best-dressed woman in Gotham City is, in fact, a “noble ambition.” Thus Catwoman is defined by the stereotypes of femininity that mute the threat of her criminality. Later, Catwoman disrupts a fashion show, again hosted by Gernreich, where she announces, “These are all one-of-a-kind clothes, Rudi. I intend to add them to my wardrobe. Let no one say that Catwoman is not the bestdressed woman in the world.” Batman and Robin, having anticipated her arrival, interject. An incredulous Robin demands, “How could a feline feloness like you also be a fashion model?” Batman corrects him: “Credit where credit is due, Robin. She may be evil, but she is attractive. You’ll know more about that in a couple of years. Now, are you coming quietly, Catwoman,

65

Chapter 2

66

or must we use force?” Catwoman’s eloquent response is a line clearly written with Kitt, not Newmar, in mind, while still allowing Catwoman to express her sexual attraction to Batman: “Your silver-tongued oratory has convinced me, Batman. I hereby remit myself to your muscular custody.” Of course, per the dictates of a network show aimed at a wide audience, and the conventions of the superhero genre, this is as overtly sexual as their banter gets. As with Batgirl, the fact of being a woman is Catwoman’s determining characteristic. Thus, when Catwoman eludes the Dynamic Duo by ducking into a women’s dressing room (according to Catwoman and Robin that “most hallowed and forbidden no-man’s land”), initially only Batgirl can follow her. When Batman and Robin finally do follow, they keep their eyes covered and cannot prevent Batgirl’s abduction by Catwoman. Later Catwoman reasons that Batman will save Batgirl, rather than prevent Catwoman’s theft of the Golden Fleece, because “no hero worth his salt will let a lady expire.” Batgirl defiantly retorts, “We who enforce the law would gladly lay down our lives for it. Batman won’t be here. He’ll be at the Belgravian embassy thwarting your nefarious scheme.” Catwoman advises her, “You’d better pray that Batman is a man-man more than he is a policeman.” The villainess is finally stopped when the Dynamic Duo and Batgirl fight it out not with Catwoman but with her henchmen. Thus, while Batgirl is allowed the freedom to engage in physical combat (albeit in a qualified, “lady-like” fashion) Catwoman’s physical agency is virtually negated by her gender and racial identity. All she can do as Batman and Robin escort her to police custody is hiss at Batgirl. Kitt’s utter lack of physical agency indicates her lack of sexual agency: she can be sexually appealing but only from a distance; that appeal can never be actualized. To be sure, Newmar is given somewhat similar restrictions; at the conclusion of “The Bat’s Kow Tow” (15 December 1966), Batman and a captured Catwoman nearly kiss before being interrupted by Robin. However,

Bat-Difference

in late 1967, television is doubly invested in the containment of the black woman; a comparable scene in which West and Kitt almost kiss would be virtually unthinkable at this time. Thus, the obverse of a progressive, race-neutral reading of Kitt’s casting has to account for the reality that her race was not only visible but a highly charged marker. For African Americans, the personal has always been political because hegemonic white society has always insisted on asserting difference according to racially drawn lines. This perhaps helps explain Kitt’s brief tenure as Catwoman. On January 18,1968 Kitt attended a “Woman Doer’s Luncheon” at the White House on the subject of juvenile delinquency, organized and hosted by “Lady Bird” Johnson. When given the opportunity to express her thoughts on the subject, Kitt recalled, “The thrust of my opinion was that crime in the streets might be related to the moral climate of America and its seeming preoccupation with violence. . . . I was concerned about women I had talked to who feared they were raising a fresh crop of youngsters for the war we couldn’t win and that would never end.”29 Much as Catwoman disrupted the private luncheon honoring Gotham’s best dressed women a month earlier on Batman, Kitt found herself cast as an outside agitator, spoiling an otherwise pleasant afternoon with the First Lady and a cohort of bourgeois women. Letters printed in the New York Times regarding the incident ran the political gamut. One described Kitt as a “publicity-seeking egotist” damaging the “legitimate cause of civil rights and the image of our Negro population.” Another letter commended her “for her courageous direct speaking to Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. The Vietnam War is alienating our youth. . . . [It] is preventing desperately needed efforts to solve our grave domestic problems . . . which lie at the root of racial tensions.” The response from within the entertainment industry was far more uniform. As Kitt recalled, “After the White House luncheon and the press it received, I became persona non grata in my own country. . . . Club contracts were canceled or ‘lost,’

67

Chapter 2

68

with the contractors refusing to draw up new ones. The television quiz show on which I was a semi-regular never invited me back. And the phones stopped ringing. . . . Thus, I was effectively stopped from performing in the United States.”30 Kitt’s last appearance as Catwoman was broadcast before the incident at the White House, on January 4, 1968. It can only be conjectured as to whether or not this absence was another example of Kitt’s blacklisting, but it is difficult to imagine ABC supporting the actress at time in which few in the industry did. Her offense was compounded by her race; like all African Americans, her identity is politicized by a history of slavery and institutional racism that directly contradicts the utopian tenets of the nation. As Kitt observed, “Scores of Hollywood . . . personalities . . . have been far more critical . . . than I have. The difference, of course, is that I am not Barbara Howar or Jane Fonda or Candice Bergen. I am a black woman.”31 If Kitt’s Catwoman could exist in an imaginary world in which her racial identity was not regarded as a deficiency or a burden, Citizen Kitt could not be allowed a similar luxury. In speaking to power she affirmed the political boundaries that were so dramatically dividing the nation, the same boundaries that Batman had playfully skirted for two years. By the spring of 1968, however, Batman, it seems, had outlived its utility in an increasingly polarized nation. The final episode aired on March 14, 1968, fading into the television ghost land of syndication. What proved to be Batman’s demise was the same element that had informed its initial success: a camp ethos that was predicated on the denial of crisis. Just as the perpetual return of villains threatening Gotham City confirmed a constant state of crisis, Kitt’s casting, much like her appearance at that January 1968 White House luncheon, was proof of an ongoing crisis in America that could no longer be denied.

Chapter 3

Bat-Casting

Dear Batman, You are handsome in black and white but in color TV you are absolutely beautiful. Love, Karen M., Muncie, Indiana1

A

s the example of Eartha Kitt in the role of Catwoman indicates, casting directly informed Batman’s parody of good citizenship, confirming the central paradoxes of both national and consumer identities. American identity is defined by individualism and participatory democracy that requires and encourages pluralistic participation as a means of achieving broad consensus. American identity in this era further reflects the central contradiction of mass culture, that one affirms one’s uniqueness through the consumption of mass-produced commodities. Batman indicates a way in which the superhero genre is constantly responding to social, economic, and cultural changes. The superhero genre can be a mirror of such changes, which are paradoxically cohered through their remediation within mass culture. The tropes of the genre directly facilitate the audience’s self-aware engagement with the performance of

69

Chapter 3

70

the consumer-citizen identity. By parodying the performance of national identity, Batman reflexively engages with the collapse of the subject (the consumer-citizen) into the object (America). Batman’s significance in the 1960s is predicated on this maneuver, which foregrounds the performative nature of the consumercitizen. Consequently, the show’s emphasis on Being-as-Playinga-Role is key to the performative mode of its actors and to the audience’s reception of those performances. The familiarity of guest stars informed the show’s collapse of the boundary between the public and the private, underscored by the familiarity of Batman as a symbol of ideal American values and a shared cultural past. At the same time, the relative anonymity of Adam West and Burt Ward facilitated the familiarity of the characters that they played, and the actors’ own ordinariness was a means by which viewers could identify with them. While appearing on television was a typical, if sometimes reluctant, career move for a faded film star in the 1960s, Batman quickly became a sought-after destination. According to casting director Michael McLean, “It was difficult [then] to attract people with motion picture careers . . . [but] . . . everybody wanted to do [Batman]. I got calls . . . on behalf of Frank Sinatra, and I would say, ‘Yeah, who is this, really?’ ”2 While wellestablished film stars such as Shelley Winters (as Ma Parker) and Van Johnson (as the Minstrel) were the attraction for adult viewers as children simply enjoyed the characters they played (which were original to the series), West and Ward’s primary extra-textual signifier is not a preceding film or television work but the already dominant iconicity of Batman and Robin. The two actors’ potential extraordinariness as stars is subjugated to the personal (often nostalgic) identification viewers make with the characters they play. At the same time, in placing Sontag’s campy quotation marks around their performances, the actors rewrote the meaning of Batman and Robin. Thus, West’s Batman and Ward’s Robin are highly self-conscious constructs, new iterations of the characters that depend upon familiarity but that

Bat-Casting

also, through a campy tone, rework that familiarity into something new. In this way, Batman offered the viewer the luxury of acknowledging the past and the future, never wholly embracing or rejecting either. As a television show centered on a longstanding pop culture icon that also featured recognizable stars in guest and cameo roles, Batman was uniquely able to express these ambivalences. Consider the example of Tallulah Bankhead, who was best known for her roles in Hollywood films of the 1940s and who appeared as Black Widow in two episodes (“Black Widow Strikes Again” and “Caught in the Spider’s Den” (16 March 1967)). When asked at the time why she was appearing on the show, Bankhead responded, “It’s camp—and I’ve been using that word since I was 15—that’s why.”3 Bankhead positions her own subjectivity in concert with that of the show’s producers and audience, reflexively coding her appearance in expressly camp terms. Thus the show is reinscribed by the star as an extension of her own persona. In “Notes on ‘Camp’ ” Sontag cited Bankhead as one of the “great stylists of temperament and mannerism” and the actress’s well-established flamboyant on and off-screen persona led to the typical charge that she always simply “played herself.”4 Bankhead represented a Hollywood past and, in her campy performance, deconstructed it, a strategy reinforced by her appearance on Batman. When confronted with the evidence of her first heist, Commissioner Gordon speaks of Black Widow to Chief O’Hara as a figure out of the past: “You may not remember, but how could I ever forget? Black Widow.” This is underscored by the title of this episode, “Black Widow Strikes Again,” which is unusual, given that these two episodes are the only appearance of this villain on the show or anywhere else. Yet, given the strong association of this character with Bankhead herself—a role written specifically for her—this title indicates her value as the guest star; it is more so Bankhead’s return than Black Widow’s. Gordon also describes her “charm and fascination,” connoting that both her nostalgic and seductive qualities

71

Chapter 3

72

are equally criminal. Her greatest power is her drollness. When Batman calls her a “sophisticated but evil woman,” Black Widow embraces his condemnation as a compliment, replying with a smile, “How handsome you are, Bat-doll.” And when finally exhausted by Batman’s earnestness, she tells him, “Dear heart, you may be caped and you may be dynamic, but to me you are a cracking bore.” Like Bankhead, Black Widow exceeds the boundaries of the social, a simultaneously troubling and attractive figure from the past. In the conflation of actor and role (a synthesis adult audiences would readily accept, given Bankhead’s infamous reputation), Bankhead steps beyond the boundaries of fantasy and reality, commenting on the artificial nature of stardom while still maintaining it. This is demonstrated by a sequence in which Black Widow assumes the guise of Robin to rob a bank. The scene is shot for its maximum comedic value by having Burt Ward simply lip-synch Bankhead’s voice. Ward adds a slight sneer to his usually erstwhile presentation as he mimes Bankhead telling her henchman “Ta-ta, darling.” While the disparity between Black Widow and Robin is the obvious comic device here, a camp sensibility is conveyed by the gap between Tallulah Bankhead, the star who subordinates the role to her persona, and Burt Ward, the neophyte actor who is obscured both by his role and Bankhead’s star persona. Black Widow as Robin and Ward lip-synching Bankhead offer a doubly layered moment of Being-as-Playing-a-Role. This instance confirms the fantasies of transformation offered by the superhero and the celebrity at the same time that it marks the boundaries of those fantasies with gentle self-mockery. The show’s self-consciousness about the fantasies attached to stardom reflects a general ambivalence about celebrity. Just as the show called into question the myths of American individualism attached to the superhero, Batman appeared during a period in which the 1950s’ articulation of celebrities as the embodiment of a postwar Horatio Alger myth were increasingly

Bat-Casting

replaced by questions of “whether fame and wealth could bring happiness.”5 In this respect there is added value to those instances in which a guest star’s persona overlaps with the role played on the show, as it can be extended to the diegetic representation of wealth (in the figure of Bruce Wayne) and the extra-diegetic discourse regarding Batman itself as the source of wealth and fame. For example, in the series’ final episode, “Minerva, Mayhem and Millionaires” (3 March 1968), the title role is played by Zsa Zsa Gabor, who built a career less on acting talent and more on a public persona as a charming Eastern European socialite who married frequently and well. The episode opens with Bruce Wayne receiving a back massage at Minerva’s Mineral Spa. In the next scene we see another millionaire client of the spa receiving Minerva’s Eggplant Jelly Vitamin Scalp Massage. When Minerva says, “Tell me, dahling, how did you collect that divine fortune of yours?” the millionaire replies, “By never taking a beautiful woman at face value, Minerva.” Minerva, “one of Gotham City’s most beautiful and glamorous women” Dozier tells us in his voice-over narration, then uses her Deepest Secret Extractor to find out where the millionaire hides his fortune. Minerva’s use of the word “dahling,” the narrator’s description of Minerva, and her predatory interest in the millionaire’s wealth clearly indicate the overlap of Gabor’s public persona with the character she plays, self-reflexively calling attention to performance as a mode of being. Yet, of equal interest is that the millionaire in this scene is played by Dozier himself—Minerva even addresses him as “Mr. Dozier”—providing the scene with another layer of reflexivity. The joke goes further than simply Dozier’s cameo; his character is a millionaire who zealously guards the secret of how he gained his wealth, yet the “secret” is self-evident in Batman itself and predicated on the supposition that the show made Dozier wealthy. The next scene duplicates the scenario of Dozier’s sequence but replaces him with fellow producer Howie Horwitz. Minerva asks him, “Tell me, dahling, how did you

73

Chapter 3

74

become a rich television producer?” to which Horwitz replies, “By never hiring method actors, Minerva, and by always ignoring network executives.” The joke regarding the type of actors favored for the show is reinforced not only by Gabor’s presence but Dozier and Horwitz’s as well. Further, West and Ward are evoked in his statement, indicating their value not as studied actors but as serviceable vehicles for the iconic characters they play. As the Bankhead and Gabor episodes demonstrate, the casting of recognizable guest stars, in contrast to the casting of West and Ward, indicates another way by which the show deployed a camp aesthetic to comment on the relationship between consumers and mass culture. In having their star status subsumed by the more significant iconicity of the characters they played, West’s and Ward’s celebrity status was wholly distinct from that of the show’s guest stars, whose casting depended upon viewer familiarity that superseded the show itself. In this way, Batman allowed viewers the opportunity to construct and consume stardom by acknowledging the enduring stardom of guest actors and by making West and Ward stars. In bringing Hollywood stars to the superhero television text alongside television stars, Batman allowed viewers to confirm the boundary between the public and the private and to play with those boundaries at the same time. Such self-aware play is instrumental to West and Ward’s portrayals but not, importantly, to those of the actors who played the villains. West and Ward offer occasional moments of self-reflexive clarity to their performances, while the actors playing the villains never have a comparable “My gosh, what am I doing in this ridiculous situation and costume?” moment. For example, “Batman Displays His Knowledge” opens with the Dynamic Duo trapped inside a giant coffee cup that is part of a billboard advertisement. Catwoman activates the display’s mechanical percolator that will douse Batman and Robin in sulphuric acid; however, in this instance, not only do Batman and Robin get out of the trap they find themselves in, but Robin

Bat-Casting

expresses a troubling awareness that they are caught in some kind of a cyclical narrative trap. With the threat of the acid stopped, Robin muses, “I don’t know how we do it, Batman . . .  the way we get into these scrapes and get out of them. It’s almost as though someone was dreaming up these situations, guiding our destiny.” Batman dismisses the Boy Wonder’s rumination, asserting, “Things like that only happen in the movies, Robin. This is real life.” The scene offers a moment in which the actors broadly wink at their audience, acknowledging the permeable boundary between reality and fantasy and the liminal place between the two occupied by the superhero and by stars. The guest villains never have such moments written for them because the audience’s awareness of their celebrity identities is itself a constant wink at the audience, who gets to tacitly enjoy the fun of seeing someone famous dressed in a silly costume and acting out absurd scenarios. Both strategies draw the viewer closer to the actors, dissolving the border between the individual and mass culture. In closing the gap between viewer and performer, the show also comments on the performance of difference between the superhero and his secret identity. The gap between secret identity and superhero identity is frequently commented on in Batman, a strategy by which each identity is the object to the other’s subject. By extension, the actors on-screen and the roles they play are articulated as the object to the viewer’s subject by way of identification and familiarity. Consider a sequence from the episode “Ice Spy” (29 March 1967), in which the villain Mr. Freeze (Eli Wallach), having kidnapped a scientist who has developed a formula for instant ice, sends a list of ransom demands to police headquarters. These demands include Bruce Wayne reading a televised statement from the Bruce Wayne Ice Arena, prompting Commissioner Gordon to call Batman via the Bat-phone and Chief O’Hara to contact Bruce Wayne on the Wayne Manor phone line. Bruce takes the call from Gordon, assuming the vocal identity of Batman but is suddenly confronted

75

Chapter 3

76

with a challenge as the house phone for Wayne Manor rings. Bruce alternates between the red Bat-phone at his left ear and the white Wayne Manor phone at his right to carry on a conversation between his two identities. This sequence underscores the fact that in public Bruce is always performing one of two roles: millionaire playboy or Caped Crusader. Quickly shifting from one phone to the other, West reads his Batman lines with a stoic inflection, his posture rigid. He visibly slumps as Bruce Wayne, a look of consternation reinforcing his exasperated tone. When Bruce tells his alter ego, “I have the same faith in you that all of Gotham City has” and Batman responds, “I hope Robin and I are deserving of that faith,” the central paradox of the dual identity is put on full display. Each identity shores up the other, giving the bifurcated subjectivity of Bruce Wayne/ Batman internal coherency. Thus the crisis of the split identity, the fractured self, is papered over by West’s camp portrayal. The conversation finished, Gordon delivers the sequence’s punch line: “Two fine men. So dissimilar in many respects and yet . . . yet so similar in others.” The same could be said of West and Batman. He is Batman and, at the same time, he isn’t; West is a star, yet he is also like us. In the linkage between actors and roles, Batman reflects the growing disillusionment with the values of American individualism and the dream of material wealth traditionally attached to celebrities. Thus, any ironic comment on Bruce Wayne’s class status or Batman and Robin’s celebrity resonates with contemporaneous coverage of celebrities that openly critiques fantasies of class mobility. For children reading comic books in the 1950s, postwar prosperity made the idea of a millionaire playboy and his ward fighting crime with high-tech gadgets and preposterous alter egos as feasible a fantasy as finding fame and fortune as a star in Hollywood. Fast forward a decade and those same children, now college-age adults, debunk both fantasies. As Karen Sternheimer notes, celebrity coverage in the 1960s

Bat-Casting

“both reflected and reinforced this growing disillusionment” with postwar promises of prosperity.6 Like the superhero genre, Hollywood movie stardom is strongly predicated on the intersection between the everyday and the extraordinary, the collapse of the object (star persona) with subject (the real person behind that persona). The emphasis on West and Ward’s ordinariness and their over-identification with their roles on Batman offers another example of the collapse of the subject/object divide that viewers use as a means of navigating the boundary between the exceptional and the ordinary. As television stars, West and Ward are typical of the production of television celebrity at a time in which the cultural cache of television was regarded as inferior to that of the movies by producers and consumers alike. As Eartha Kitt recalled in an autobiography, “I loved doing Catwoman. It was great, great fun, but the two actors who played Batman and Robin took their characters so seriously that they became the characters in real life.”7 As if to confirm this, and to assert her star status in contrast to their lack of it, Kitt does not mention West and Ward by name anywhere in her autobiography. When approached to appear in Batman, West was a 37-year-old journeyman actor whose most prominent role at that point was as a parodic James Bond–style character, Captain Quik, in a series of Nestle Quik commercials. On the strength of one of these spots, Dozier agreed to test West, whom, he recalled, understood “that he would have to play [both roles] very straight and very square” and “resist the terrible temptation to be charming.”8 In pre-production correspondence to Dozier about Bruce Wayne, Semple wrote, “The way I see him, he is so ineffably square that he has a sort of sui generis normality strictly his own.”9 In addition to contending with his superhero persona, then, West was further submerged by the exaggerated normality of Bruce Wayne. West was soon paired with a 19-year-old UCLA undergraduate named Bert Gervis

77

Chapter 3

78

West takes a backseat to Batman both on and off-screen. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

(soon to be rechristened Burt Ward), who had no experience in film or television. According to Dozier, “he had that ‘Gee whiz, Mr. Dozier,’ y’know approach right off the bat that couldn’t be duplicated. . . . he was just one of those natural kids.”10 West and Ward’s portrayals of Bruce and Dick are most often on display in quiet moments at Wayne Manor, usually with Aunt Harriet. West imbues Bruce Wayne’s study of a rare stamp in his parlor with as much seriousness as he does as Batman examining a fingerprint. Meanwhile, Ward is energetic and irrepressible,

Bat-Casting

whether as Dick on a date or as Robin on the trail of a villain. Ward’s overheated acting style, in which exaggeration was his primary tool, comes across as a natural aspect of his limited acting ability and experience. Alan Napier once remarked that he advised Ward during a dubbing session, “Look, Burt, after all this nonsense is over, if you like, I will teach you to talk and perhaps even act.”11 A profile of the show that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post’s May 7, 1966 issue emphasized the lack of acting talent as an asset for West and Ward: “The lines do not require Sir John Gielgud to interpret them. As a matter of fact, interpretation of lines is discouraged on the Batman show. The dialogue is supposed to be solid mahogany, and so Batman always speaks in a camp-counselor baritone, Robin in Hollywood’s standard boy voice.”12 Both West and Ward were required by the demands of the show’s parodic tone to play their characters purely on the surface level, as if reading a comic book out loud to a child. This perspective worked in concert with the already established iconicity of their characters and the actors’ virtual anonymity, so that public awareness of West and Ward was predicated on those roles and no others. Consider, for example, a 1966 fan letter to DC Comics that offered casting suggestions for other superheroes (e.g., Troy Donahue as the Flash and Tab Hunter as Aquaman). These actors, the fan suggested, could appear alongside “whoever plays [Batman] on television.”13 The naming of famous stars to play superheroes more obscure than Batman suggests that star iconicity has to be stronger than character iconicity when those characters are less familiar to the general public. Consequently, more iconic characters do not require the same kind of compensation through casting. Further, the general reception of West as simply the actor who plays Batman is reflected by the fact that, in April 1966, of the nearly 40,000 fan letters he received, almost 25,000 were addressed to Batman.14 Tellingly, the dominance of Batman and Robin as pre-existing comic book icons over the actors playing them is confirmed in

79

Chapter 3

80

The star is ritualistically subordinated to the comic book icon at the start of each episode.

the opening credit sequence of the show, which featured closeups of comic book–style drawings of each character beside the actors’ names. Of course, at the same time, West’s name and portrayal are permanently attached to Batman; West cannot subsume the character under his own persona, but he does add another layer to the palimpsest of Batman’s textual history. West and Ward’s subordination to their roles, and their preBatman ordinariness, is also evident in the gossip and fan magazine coverage of the pair that became an inevitable by-product of the show’s popularity and symptomatic of changing attitudes about the myth of celebrity. The two were regularly profiled in teen magazines such as 16 and Tiger Beat, yet the cover images and text regularly identify them as Batman and Robin, not as West and Ward.15 Article titles such as “Batman and Robin Unmask Each Other!” equate the civilian identities of the superheroes with the identities of the actors playing them. In the article itself, West extols Ward’s fidelity to his wife, and Ward

Bat-Casting

admires the unmarried West’s discretion regarding his dates. If, when you unmask Batman and Robin, you find West and Ward, then you confirm their importance as another textual iteration of these characters. The exchange between reality and fantasy is also evident in a profile of West in a gossip magazine that offers that he “is reminded so often of that other actor . . . George Reeves, [who] had become firmly implanted in the imagination of his fans as ‘Superman.’ ”16 The article’s expose is unusually candid about the machinations of popular taste, ostensibly uncovering the deepest fears of the celebrity: that his popularity is merely a passing fad and that his career may be forestalled by a single iconic role. This article writes a new script for West in which his new role is this “authentic” version of himself: a newly minted star particularly vulnerable to the hazards of stardom. The processes of celebrity-making then are a key extradiegetic element in any episode of the show, because it is a central aspect of the discourse surrounding it. The episodes “The Cat’s Meow” (14 December 1966) and “The Bat’s Kow Tow” directly engage with the construction of fame, implicitly confirming the power shared between producers and consumers in the process of celebrity-making. In these episodes Catwoman develops a device that robs its victims of speech. The popular 1960s duo Chad and Jeremy, “England’s singing sensations,” arrive in Gotham for a concert at the policeman’s ball. As a throng of ecstatic teenage fans greet them (like the readers of 16, hungry for revelations about their idols), the pair conduct a Beatles-esque press conference at the airport. One teenage girl gushes, “Oh, aren’t they the most adorable twosome in the world?” Her friend corrects her, “If you don’t count Batman and Robin.” Later, Catwoman uses her device on “the world’s most popular singing duo” so as to collect a ransom on their voices. During a television interview with Allan Stevens (Steve Allen), Batman wryly notes that the loss of Chad and Jeremy’s voices has upset millions of teenagers worldwide but pleased

81

Chapter 3

82

their parents. An upset Robin asserts, “Speaking as an average, ordinary, red-blooded, typical American teenager, I think this is one of the worst things that could have happened.” The comedic emphasis on Robin’s ordinariness reinforces his difference from other teenagers; however, his earnest fandom also aligns him with ordinary teenagers, exploiting a primary appeal of the superhero and the star alike. This dialogic exchange between the commodity sign (Robin) and the consumer is extended by the rhetoric circulating about the show’s hipness, a designation that instantly marked the show’s popularity as necessarily temporary. The power of the superhero, like that of mass culture, is the promise of transformation it offers consumers, confirmed by its own constant state of transformation. West himself in an interview during the show’s original run articulated Batman’s address to a teen audience, linking star and fan with his observation, “I was a maverick. . . . Teens are mavericks today. I like that. It keeps them from that terrible thing—the herd. I dig their individualness.”17 Echoing a longstanding marketing strategy to sell the mass-produced commodity as an expression of individuality, even rebellion, West asserts the show’s immediate attractiveness to teens, particularly salient amidst the cultural and political upheavals of the period. In doing so, however, he also implicitly underscores that, according to the cyclical nature of mass culture as dictated by the notion of hipness and individuality, Batman’s popularity was necessarily terminal. At the conclusion of “The Bat’s Kow Tow” a vocally restored Chad and Jeremy perform a concert with Commissioner Gordon, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Aunt Harriet in attendance. Aunt Harriet comments that the duo is “very hep,” and Dick corrects her, saying, “It’s ‘hip,’ Aunt Harriet. They changed it.” Gordon, who is there at the insistence of his grandchildren, feels they are “a bit on the groovy side,” to which Bruce replies, “Every era has its own music, Commissioner, its own art, its own manner of speech.” Aunt Harriet opines that “the essence of progress is change,” to which

Bat-Casting

Gordon responds that he prays that Batman and Robin “never suffer the stigma of antiquity.” This exchange reflects the consumer’s competing desires for the values embodied by a mass culture object to continue in perpetuity and the necessity to, at some point, abandon the object for a new one. The movement forward toward an anticipated (emergent) pop culture trend is, through Batman, mediated with the nostalgic (residual) text of the past. This primary trope of mass culture reflects and reinforces through the figure of Batman the push and pull between a traditional notion of America and the emergent counterculture revision of the nation. Thus, when West claimed that he relied on “sense memory” of Batman comic books from his childhood in playing the role, this implicitly informs his sublimation to the overwhelming iconicity of the character and the national values that the character represents.18 As both a former “maverick” and Batman fan, West aligns himself with adult and juvenile viewers, affirming that the collapse of the child/adult binary is one of the show’s key strategies. West recalled walking onto the set in costume for the first time: “I just started acting as I thought Batman might, and [the cast and crew] really didn’t make fun of it. . . . Remember, most of those people, like anyone else, were familiar with the character of Batman and the phenomenon, so I think it was mostly a reaction of, ‘Hey, what a lucky guy! Why couldn’t I do that?’ ”19 As a “lucky guy” West’s casting confirms the transformative possibilities of (play)acting and of the superhero as a shared childhood touchstone. The gap between West and Ward as television celebrities, obscured by their characters’ overwhelming iconicity, and the show’s guest stars was conveyed by a regular device of the show’s second season, the “Bat-climb” window cameos by celebrities usually appearing as themselves. According to casting director Michael McLean, Batman “was the ‘in’ thing at the time, and everyone wanted to be a part of it, which is why we invented the Bat-climbs.”20 As Batman and Robin climbed up

83

Chapter 3

84

or down the side of a building, a window would open and a celebrity would have a brief exchange with the Dynamic Duo. Stars who appeared this way include Jerry Lewis, Dick Clark, Art Linkletter, Sammy Davis, Jr., Don Ho, and Edward G. Robinson. One of the most interesting cameos was one of the last: gossip columnist Suzy Knickerbocker, who appeared in “King Tut’s Coup” (8 March 1967) near the end of Season 2. Asked by a surprised Batman what she is doing in Gotham City, Knickerbocker replies, “I go where the action is, Batman. The Caribbean, the Riviera, the Greek Islands. Wherever there’s glamour, that’s where I am.” When Robin advises her that it is “pretty quiet here,” she says, “Oh, I don’t know, Boy Wonder. I hear millionaire Bruce Wayne is really one of the hippies. All that marvelous money and fantastic Wayne Manor.” “Stately Wayne Manor,” Batman corrects her. “Mr. Wayne is basically a very serious young man.” Recalling the recurring phrase used in Dozier’s voice-over to introduce Wayne Manor, West’s line plays with the boundary between diegesis and extra-diegesis. Further, by emphasizing the soberness of Bruce Wayne, Batman confirms his own extraordinary status, underlining his embodiment of the intersection between the everyday and the fantastic. Observing that Batman is wearing “a darling little costume,” Knickerbocker says, “I think you two belong in my column. I’ll slip you in somewhere between Acapulco and Princess Grace.” An excited Robin responds, “Holy jet set! Imagine us in Suzy Knickerbocker’s column, Batman.” Batman somberly advises his sidekick, “An unlikely spot for two mundane crime fighters.” After they continue their climb, Knickerbocker turns to the camera and says, “I wonder who they really are. Probably a couple of international playboys. I mean, who else would climb walls?” This instance of direct address reiterates Batman’s rapport with the audience, a necessary component of parody. In this case, it not only reinforces the viewer’s special relationship with the show’s producers but also with the celebrity gossip

Bat-Casting

industry, which also assumes knowledge of the mass culture subject as a condition for a reflexive exchange with fans. Consequently, the boundaries between fantasy and reality, celebrity and non-celebrity are both ironically commented on and reinscribed. The superhero as celebrity is a regular source of comedy in the show. In “The Joker Goes to School” Batman speeds to Woodrow Roosevelt High School to investigate the latest activities of the Joker. On arrival he is greeted by a rush of students pouring out of the school. He quickly picks up his Bat-bullhorn and warns, “Sorry, kids, stay back. Robin isn’t with me. . . . [He’s] attending school, just as you are.” When a girl asks which school, Batman replies, “I can’t tell you that. It might reveal his secret true identity.” At school, we see that Dick Grayson is both ordinary in that he attends a local public school and extraordinary (being the ward of a millionaire) but is not the object of intense, mass female affection. If Robin’s “secret true identity” were ever revealed, Dick Grayson would become more attractive by association but not Robin, for, like the movie star, the superhero represents the zenith of desirability. As the magazine coverage of West and Ward suggests, attraction to stars is strongly motivated by the promise of revelation. The star harbors a secret, and that secret is their private, true self. This intersects with an essential value of the superhero that illustrates the value of that figure’s ideological flexibility. While superficially a conservative figure defending core national values, the superhero is also the fantastic subject whose excessive nature (best exemplified by appearance) is expressly non-normative. Therefore, our attraction to the superhero is not about the secret identity, which is known to the audience, but to deeper secrets that reflect something in ourselves or our world that otherwise goes unseen. As a female fan expressed it in a letter to DC Comics in 1966: “I like to dress up as Robin. . . . I look a lot like Robin if you close your eyes.”21 If rather ordinary people such as West and Ward can become stars, that is, something radically better, then so too

85

Chapter 3

86

might the fan. The promise of transcendental transformation that defines the star is also at work in the production of desire that revolves around Batman and Robin here. West and Ward serve as necessary figures who articulate that transformation. It then becomes one of the functions of the guest stars to reinscribe the integrity of the star image and reconfirm its elevated status apart from the everyday, even as the star is insinuated into that everyday through the primarily domestic medium of television and the familiar tropes of the superhero genre. Even if guest stars are not recognizable by name or sight to all viewers as such, the title credit sequences of each episode helpfully name these actors as “special guest villain” or “villainess.” Accordingly, Batman’s casting of guest actors in the roles of villains condenses object and person into a single signifier. The casting of Cesar Romero as the Joker offers a distinct example of how this process was central to the show. Romero, cast throughout much of his career as a Latin lover (and, in six films from 1939 to 1941, as the heroic Cisco Kid), was cast expressly against type as the gleefully criminal Joker. Romero remarked on his casting, “Why [Dozier] wanted me for the Joker, I will never know. His wife Ann Rutherford said he saw me in something that made him want to cast me. I can’t imagine what it was. I’d never done anything like that before.”22 Here the disparity between the actor’s established persona and his role on the series produces those quotation marks around his performance and casts Dozier as Henry Jenkins’ textual poacher, willfully reading a text against the grain. Romero observed that the Joker was “a part that you can do everything that you’ve always been told not to do as an actor. In other words, you can get as hammy as you like and go all out and it’s great fun. I enjoy it.”23 The Joker’s debut episode illustrates the ways in which the show self-consciously exploited the very notion of performance, of Being-As-Playing-a-Role, as a means of engaging with Stuart Hall’s dialectic of containment and resistance. “The Joker is Wild” (26 January 1966) opens at Gotham State Penitentiary,

Bat-Casting

described by the narrator as “an institution of mortar and stone, steel bars and rigid discipline. But, as we have seen before, Warden Crichton’s advanced theories of penology make it a place where recreation is part of reform and entertainment plays an important role in con-tainment.” In the opening scene we see the Joker pitching in a prison yard baseball game while in the stands Police Chief O’Hara remarks, “I never thought I’d see the day when the likes of [the Joker] would be content to play baseball rather than planning a prison break.” Naturally, the Joker proceeds to do just that, escaping the prison by means of a giant spring hidden under the pitcher’s mound. Batman’s thematic concern with the tension between containment and resistance is literalized in the ritualistic resistance to containment (the prison break) and re-containment (the return of the villain to prison, always infused with the hope that containment will lead to rehabilitation). It also offers another example of how celebrity itself, and performing elaborate dress-up on Batman, are fantasy modes of resistance to the containment of everyday life. Central to this dynamic is performance. The Joker is known only as “the Joker.” As with almost every other villain on the show, no actual birth name is given to the character, even when he is incarcerated, indicating the advantage that the performing subject has over institutions of social control. The constant tension derived from the secret identity confirms that the superhero is always understood to be harboring a secret self, but the villains bear no such burden. Commissioner Gordon frequently reflects on who Batman and Robin might be under their masks, and in Season 3 Batman and Robin constantly wonder who Batgirl really is. Conversely, Batman never questions that the Riddler, the Joker, or the Penguin might be anyone other than these criminal aliases. The object and subject are utterly conflated within one another, indicating an absence, the suggestion that there is no “real” person beyond the lurid facade of the Joker. This complete immersion into a fantastic subjectivity underlines the inherent deviancy of the villain. Yet, the quotation

87

Chapter 3

88

Cesar Romero as the Joker, incongruous mustache and all. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

marks of Romero’s performance always remind the viewer that the real person beneath the white clown makeup, the garishly red lips, and the shock of green hair is Romero himself. Consequently, perhaps the actor’s campiest contribution to the role is his mustache, which he refused to shave for the part, clumsily obscured (but not hidden) by the white face makeup.

Bat-Casting

Meanwhile, Batman’s secret identity of Bruce Wayne confirms his “actuality” as a person and his incorporation into society. This is facilitated by West’s lack of pre-Batman star power; unlike Romero, for West there is no well-known performing history to link the actor to a shared cultural memory or “special guest star” designation in the credits. Furthering the subtext of performance, the Joker is motivated to break out of prison after learning that his image will not be included as one of the busts in the Gotham City Museum of Modern Art’s Comedians’ Hall of Fame. Out of prison, the Joker has traded his drab prison uniform for his gaudy purple zoot suit, linking the criminal excesses of his actions with the excesses of his appearance. As an act of revenge, he steals the museum’s “fabulous jewel collection,” aided by henchmen named for famous comedians (Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, and Ernie Kovacs). Later, in an effort to match Batman weapon-for-weapon, the Joker designs his own utility belt in imitation of Batman’s. In both instances, the Joker shapes his identity and motivates his actions according to identities of others remediated as objects. Thus, part of his plot to rob from the museum involves the creation of his own bust in the Comedians’ Hall of Fame. And in having a hideout at the Gotham Pier Amusement Park, the Joker articulates his identity according to a performance space, much like Batman does with the Batcave (or Bruce Wayne does with Wayne Manor or Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara do with police headquarters). The intersection of identity, space, and object is fully realized in “Batman is Riled” (27 January 1966) when Batman and Robin christen the steamship S.S. Gotham. Not only does the name of the ship link object and space but subject is integrated into this dynamic by virtue of the fact that Bruce Wayne is the majority stockholder in Gotham’s shipping line. The story line’s most transparent take on performance and identity comes in the climax of “The Joker is Wild.” Disguised in a Pagliacci mask and costume, the Joker performs as part

89

Chapter 3

90

of the Gotham City Opera Company on live television. When Batman and Robin swoop in, the Joker pulls off his mask to reveal yet another mask: his leering grin, green hair, and white face. The performative nature of the actors’ roles is reflexively foregrounded when, in the ensuing fight, we see through a television set the Dynamic Duo being subdued by the Joker and his henchmen. The frame-within-a-frame device underlines the discursive nature of the television performance, further emphasized by the Joker’s subsequent threat to unmask Batman and Robin on live television. Shot in a tight close-up that makes Romero’s mustache readily apparent, the Joker proclaims that the unmasking of the Dynamic Duo will be “the climax of my performance, the zenith of my career.” To further emphasize that to be a superhero is to playact, Dozier asks in voice-over narration, “Could this mean curtains? . . . Is this the end of their careers as crime fighters?” The concluding episode, “Batman is Riled” continues this reflexive consideration of television (and the audience’s relationship to it) as a mediating device for performance. For example, Batman, Robin, and Alfred sit in the Batcave and watch news of a spreading crime wave perpetrated by criminals emboldened by the live television broadcast of the Joker’s victory over the Dynamic Duo. The newscaster looks grimly into the camera and intones, “Have Batman and Robin finally met their match? . . . In this hour of peril and need, perhaps all our prayers are best summed up by my small son Harold, just eight years old. Kneeling beside his little bed, hands clasped reverently before him, he said, ‘God bless mommy, God bless daddy, God bless my dog Spot. And please, Batman, whoever you are behind that mask of yours, please save us.’ ” Suddenly, the broadcast is interrupted by the Joker, who takes over the studio and puts on a parody of the game show What’s My Line? (CBS, 1950–1967) that he cheekily refers to as What’s My Crime? The Joker’s threat to the social is conflated with his appropriation of the television medium, broadcasting

Bat-Casting

his anarchic energy directly into the homes of Gothamites, unchecked by the pacifying figure of Batman. This scene is bookended by this episode’s epilogue, in which Bruce, Dick, and Alfred are watching the same newscaster in the living room of Wayne Manor. The newscaster happily reports, “And so, with the Joker’s capture, Gotham City’s worst crime wave in history has come to an end. Tonight, once more, we can all sleep peacefully in our beds, secure in the knowledge that, as I assured my small son Harold, just eight years old, ‘Yes, Harold,’ I said, ‘there is a Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.’ ” The television medium confirms to Bruce and Dick the social integrity of their superhero identities, just as that medium does the same for Batman’s juvenile viewer while it interrogates it for adult viewers. Aunt Harriet enters the room to remind Dick of his piano lesson and Bruce’s young ward protests, saying he wants to watch more coverage of the Joker. A shocked Harriet lectures Bruce: “Bruce Wayne, I’m surprised at you, allowing a boy Dick’s age to listen to such sordid goingson.” A cut to a reaction shot of Bruce shows that he can barely contain his amusement at the suggestion that Dick is too young to even watch a news report on the Joker. His reaction can be read on two levels: for the adult viewer, it is a bemused response to the Wertham-esque notion that comic book characters are potentially corrupting, and for the child viewer it comes from the knowledge that Dick can handle much more than simply hearing about the Joker. On both registers of address the show individualizes its address to viewers, exploiting an affective relationship of consumers to mass culture that revolves around the experiences of childhood and is articulated according to the performance of dual identities. An affective relationship to childhood is the principle element that informs the actors’ performances on the show, which are constituted by the complex affect of parody. West integrated this parodic approach with an earnestness that superficially seems contradictory. In an interview during the show’s original

91

Chapter 3

92

run, West declared, “Playing Batman is a serious responsibility. Two generations of Americans have grown up with a love and respect for this devoted defender of the good and the pure. I am deeply and humbly aware of the moral obligations that accompany my work on this series.”24 Nostalgia holds together the registers of parody and homage for adult viewers and also aligns them with the juvenile viewer, who is earnestly invested in Batman as a contemporary figure of resolute goodness. Meanwhile, two of the most common reasons given by the guest stars for their appearance on Batman were because the opportunity was fun and/or because a child in their lives wanted them to. For example, Eli Wallach, one of three actors to play Mr. Freeze, recalled, “When my kids were little, they’d always plead with me to appear on . . . Batman . . . it was a fun experience for me. For years afterward, I was respected and honored by my kids.”25 Thus an actor’s very appearance on the show, his or her playacting, is a performance for children and is defined by the affects of childhood. While this approach, so central to the show, confused the boundary between childhood and adulthood, no guest star played with that boundary as subversively or successfully as Liberace. In recalling his motivation for appearing on the show, Liberace directly aligned himself with the children who watched the show, not the adults: “Like some of the children, I loved the villains because they were sort of antiheroes and you always wanted to see what they could do to put Batman and Robin in a predicament and then, of course, it was fun to see how they got out of it.”26 Liberace, a very familiar face to television viewers in 1966, was always a liminal figure for American audiences. His was the classic case of the gay in the glass closet who, in blurring gender boundaries, offered an explicit counterpoint to the conservative images of masculinity that crowded television screens in the 1950s and 1960s. He transparently offered viewers the pleasures of Being-as-Playinga-Role with as wide a grin and broad a wink to the audience as anyone else on Batman possibly could.

Bat-Casting

Liberace appeared on the episodes “The Devil’s Fingers” (26 October 1966) and “The Dead Ringers” (27 October 1966) as famous concert pianist Chandell and as his criminal twin brother, Harry. Chandell, who is being blackmailed by Harry, schemes to woo and marry Aunt Harriet, so that he can have access to the Wayne fortune after killing the millionaire and his ward. In preparation for his master scheme, Chandell commits a series of robberies using his coterie of female accomplices, Doe, Rae, and Mimi, with the intention of paying off his blackmailing brother and living the “straight” life with Aunt Harriet. The plot involves a series of double crosses between the two brothers and ends with them both in prison. The fact that these episodes were the highest rated in the series’ three seasons suggests that the subversive fun of role-playing as presented by Liberace was highly appealing to both straight and gay audiences.27 Yet Liberace was a major camp icon for both straight and gay audiences well before Batman brought camp to the average American household. More famous for his increasingly flamboyant costumes than his playing technique, Liberace effectively used television as a springboard for his success. The Liberace Show (syndicated, 1952–1955) garnered Liberace 10,000 fan letters a week by 1954 and was especially popular among female viewers.28 Much of the appeal of the show, and the key to Liberace’s public persona, was the mixing of disparate elements: high culture (classical pieces) with popular or low culture (including show tunes and boogie-woogie numbers), and his formal attire (He wore tuxedos in these early years.) and folksy, domesticated demeanor, emphasized by direct address to the camera and the regular appearance on the show of his brother George on violin and of their mother in the audience. His televised performances enact what Raymond Williams has famously described as television’s quality of “mobile privatization,” in which the viewer is able to access the extraordinary within the familiar confines of the domestic.29

93

Chapter 3

94

Liberace’s gender and sexual liminality were the subject of gossip columns (He famously won a libel case against a columnist who had described him as “the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter . . . a . . . fruit-flavoured, mincing, icecovered heap of mother love.”) and a source of his popularity. Liberace was a vehicle by which 1950s America could not only safely blur the boundary between high and low art (well before Pop artists did the same) but also trouble the boundary between “normal” and “queer.” Liberace’s double performance, both at the piano and in his persona, was the key to his massive popularity, marking him as both within and outside of mainstream society. He doggedly separated his personal and professional lives, a strategy taken up by many of his fans as well. In this way, Liberace confirms Wertham’s assertion that the secret life of the superhero is akin to that of the homosexual. It is this liminality that made him an ideal guest star on Batman. His appearance on the show is suffused with the very nature of performance; it is, literally and figuratively, his superpower as his character, Chandell, instigates crimes by striking certain keys during his performances. As Chandell—a name that is a reference to one of Liberace’s iconic props, the chandelier, and another example of the conflation of object/subject—Liberace is effectively playing himself, an effeminate, highly affected concert pianist who performs heterosexuality as a ruse (his wooing of Harriet in these two episodes). As Harry, Liberace performs a “butch” version of heterosexual masculinity, the prototypical hard-bitten, cigar-chomping gangster. The irony and pleasure here is that the (presumably) straight brother is the natural criminal; the implicitly gay one is blackmailed into being a criminal. Like Liberace in real life, Chandell has a secret, but his secret is Harry, the heterosexual Other, the repressed hyper-masculine relic of the past. That everyone in these episodes accepts Chandell’s heterosexuality (Dick says at one point, “Gosh, he’s quite a famous ladies’ man, isn’t he?”) confirms that part of the fun of the

Bat-Casting

performance is the audience’s self-conscious suspension of disbelief, their active participation in the charade. This is an ongoing conceit of the superhero, emphasized in “The Devil’s Fingers” by the fact that no one comments on the coincidence that Bruce Wayne and Batman are on vacation at the same time and that they return to Gotham City simultaneously. Chandell’s inferred homosexuality is an open secret that is mollified (as was Liberace’s sexuality in real life) by his personable, friendly demeanor and the way in which he makes high culture accessible to a broad audience. In a 1968 essay, sociologist Charles Winick warned of the dangers of an increasingly androgynous youth culture, singly out Liberace in his assessment of this problem. Interestingly, he relates the pianist’s androgyny to childhood, not homosexuality, claiming that “his appeal seems to lie in his ability to communicate many characteristics of a five- or sixyear-old child, of either gender.”30 As with West’s emphasis on the innate goodness and almost pathological civility of Batman in his performance, Liberace’s niceness, according to Winick, is subversive. In other words, Liberace is sweet in a childlike way, destabilizing adulthood as a social construct. Further, he plays “dress up,” much as a child does, troubling the boundary not only between adult and juvenile, but masculine and feminine. West himself described the pianist as “a charming, sweet, and terminally cheerful man . . . even when we were shooting, Lee at his most dastardly had a friendly twinkle in his eye which gave away the sweetheart inside, and we found it tough to take him seriously as a villain.”31 Unlike Chandell, Liberace’s sweetness is not a dodge to hide criminal intent; it is ostensibly a sincere aspect of his personality. It is not a mask for his homosexuality but another facet of his persona that makes his presumed homosexuality allowable. The effeminate characteristics stereotypically ascribed to gay men are themselves easily relatable to childhood traits. Elton John said of Liberace, “He was what every straight person wants to think gay people are like—so camp, not at all threatening.”32 At the same

95

Chapter 3

96

time, the show’s treatment of Chandell’s idealized heterosexuality is offered with a series of winks to the audience. After Dick asserts that Chandell is a notorious ladies’ man who may morally compromise Aunt Harriet, Bruce stops him short: “Really, Dick. I’m afraid some romantic interlude has fevered your imagination.” Bruce pauses, then proceeds, saying, “Your Aunt Harriet is utterly above reproach.” The pregnant pause signals to the knowing viewer that the real absurdity in Dick’s exclamation is that Chandell is any kind of a ladies’ man at all. This same sort of sly nudge to the audience is made later when Aunt Harriet realizes after being kissed by Harry (posing as Chandell) that he is an impostor. When Alfred asks how she knows for certain, the camera dollies in for a dramatic close-up on Harriet, who says, “When a man whom I know as well as I know Chandell gives my hand a kiss, well, Alfred, there’s an old saying: ‘A girl can tell.’ ” As with other guest stars, Liberace is the primary attraction for adult viewers, not the villain he plays, and Liberace cannot be easily separated from the role of Chandell. If lack of recognition informed West and Ward’s portrayals of Batman and Robin, Liberace’s self-conscious performance of “Liberace” (which is, after all, a construct) fuels viewer pleasure. In this context, it is worth noting that Liberace supplied all of Chandell’s costumes from his own wardrobe, confirming that this Batman appearance was simply an extension of “Liberace” as a textual signifier that viewers were already quite familiar and comfortable with. Again, liminality and textual evasiveness define Liberace’s persona. If Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (who wrote the Liberace episodes) had not chosen Chandell as the villain’s moniker, he could just as easily have turned to any number of nicknames by which Liberace was known: Mr. Showmanship, the Candelabra Kid, Guru of Glitter, Mr. Smiles, The King of Diamonds, and Mr. Boxoffice. All of these names label the performance and the reception of it as much as any superhero or supervillain name does. Consequently, Liberace’s transformative liminality is as attractive to his fans as that of the superhero. A critic could just

Bat-Casting

as well have been speaking of the utopian value of superheroes when he noted of Liberace’s extravagant stage costumes, “Mr. Showmanship is Mr. Everyman doing what Everyman dreams he could do if only he had a chance.”33 Marjorie Garber writes about what she calls “unmarked transvestites,” popular figures who do not explicitly cross gender lines but who represent a “ ‘category crisis’ . . . a failure of definitional distinction, a borderline that becomes permeable, that permits of border crossings from one (apparently distinct) category to another.”34 She identifies Liberace as the consummate unmarked transvestite who “straddled the line between classical and popular music, all the while keeping his costume changes one jump (or jumpsuit) ahead of the competition.”35 Comparably, superheroes are unmarked transvestites, figures who, through excessive appearance and actions, trouble the boundaries of Self and Other. The hegemonic values that the superhero is aligned with validate the very excesses that set the superhero apart; it is a contradiction that the superhero externalizes. Linking the superhero to the figure of the dandy and to classical Greek statuary, Scott Bukatman contends that “purity and performative flamboyance . . . [are] uniquely combined in the superhero’s costume.”36 The superhero costume and persona allow these liminal figures to exceed the boundaries they otherwise enforce in their comparatively drab secret identities. If Batman is therefore Garber’s “category crisis,” then so too is the show itself. It is both a reflexive mocking of the superhero genre (its adult register) and an affective celebration of innate goodness (its juvenile register). This double register of contradictory meanings is reconciled by a camp aesthetic born from what Arthur C. Danto sees as Pop art’s “efforts to overcome the disenfranchising boundaries between genders and between classes, from the perspective of a utopian politics which insisted . . . on Paradise Now.”37 As a network television show that set off an intense but brief national craze, Batman defined a particular moment of

97

Chapter 3

98

“now,” utopia as a purely affective, subjective experience that could only be realized via mass consumption. Consumption, authorized by the performances on the show, is offered by Batman as a means of appealing to and negotiating the social changes of the period. Multiplicity and fluidity are Batman’s true superpowers, ones that extend to all subsequent iterations of the character and are bestowed upon all fans who embrace the optimistic and transformative spirit of the show. Reflecting on her role in capturing Harry at the conclusion of “The Dead Ringers,” Aunt Harriet modestly insists, “A person just does what he has to do. And that’s what makes America great, isn’t it?” In response, Commissioner Gordon remarks, “If only there were more like her.” Laughing at this send-up of good citizenship offers viewers a means of doing what they have to do in a world that is increasingly distant from the ideals of goodness linked to a national and personal past that linger just on the horizon as a utopia yet to be achieved. We’ll get there, Batman promises, by following the Bat-signal, laughing all the way.

Chapter 4

Bat-Being

Dear Batman, I would like one of everything that has the word Batman on it. Your fan, Gloria G., Reading, Pa.1

T

he debut episode of Batman, “Hi Diddle Riddle” (12 January 1966), offers one of the most iconic moments in the show’s short history. Pursuing the Riddler to Gotham City’s newest discotheque, What a Way to Go-Go, Batman dances with a young woman he suspects is connected with the arch criminal. On the dance floor Batman passes his fingers in V shapes horizontally across his eyes, his hips gyrating to the generic mod music coming from the jukebox. According to West, his dance “was all improvised on the set. The Watusi was the dance that was popular then. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do the Batusi.’ ”2 The spontaneous dance likely delighted Semple, who, in what he called his “Bat Bible” (his guidebook that laid out the series’ rules for its other writers), declared, “We must appeal on two levels, to kids and grown-ups. On a sophisticated level the appeal comes from inherent juvenility.”3 Indeed, as he wrote this first script, Semple noted in a letter to Dozier, “I conceive this

99

Chapter 4

100

whole thing being so gorgeously square that it’s hip; so far Out that it’s In.”4 Importantly, this is a dynamic at the heart of parody, in which textual producers are flagging their dual identity as consumers. What else, after all, was West doing in remediating the Watusi as a bat-dance but performing his own kind of textual poaching, synthesizing the subjectivities of producer and consumer? West in effect performs how to watch Batman, and the show’s place as a liminal text in the household reflects its subversive status as a mass culture text. Its subversiveness is derived from its strategies of convergence culture and textual poaching that both comment on and exploit the processes of mass commodification. This final chapter will consider how, by foregrounding the performative aspects of the social in America at this time, Batman inevitably inspired extra-textual production. By making viewers complicit in the self-aware construction of national identity and consumer culture (a necessary component of its parody), Batman makes the utopian possibility of mass culture more transparent and available to viewers. That utopian possibility is the articulation of a new subjectivity by way of extra-textual production that is inspired by the show but which must, necessarily, exceed the textual boundaries of the show and the prescribed limits of production culture. The series owes much to Pop art, which had by 1966 already established a relationship to mass culture by tearing down the boundary between high art and pop culture and foregrounded the presence of the consumer as author. As early as 1962 Batman and Robin were the subjects of Pop artist Mel Ramos’s painting Batmobile. In the same period Roy Lichtenstein became famous by placing enlarged reproductions of comic book art in galleries and museums. Lichtenstein’s work, much like West’s Batusi, collapses the boundary between producers and consumers, suggesting that the division between the two is itself another binary—like that of high art and mass culture—to be resisted. Lichtenstein offers that the boundary between object and subject should be dissolved,

Bat-Being

so that each term in the binary (high art/mass culture, producer/ consumer) is the object to the other’s subject. In doing so, Pop art offered a model for self-reinvention through popular culture. Consequently, Batman’s use of Pop art reflexivity is instrumental in guiding viewers’ own appropriations of Batman, as its appeal is based on collapsing the divide between childhood and adulthood, making each the object to the other’s subject. Importantly, Pop artists make the affect produced by an iconic image the real subject of their work, not the icon itself. Affect informs not only the reception of Batman (how much “fun” it was to be on the show and to watch it) but is a principle part of its spectacle, exemplified by the “zap!” and “kerplunk!” of onomatopoeic inserts during fight scenes that were frequently referenced in newspaper and magazine articles about the show. Spectacle in Batman is organized around the nostalgic and utopian affect of the superhero commodity. As we have seen, this affect remediates anxiety about present-day crises by invoking a personal (utopian) vision of the past. The very origin of Batman is defined in such terms, further promoting the simultaneous connection and wry distance between viewers and the character. As a young boy, Bruce Wayne witnesses the slaying of his parents and, as an adult, his ritualistic transformation into Batman is a psychological means by which he compensates for the trauma. The Batman persona embodies the collapse of the child/adult binary. Each time Bruce dons the cape and cowl, he revisits the murder of his parents, confirming that it is traumatic in large part because it effectively ended his utopian childhood. Bruce Wayne’s recursive and temporary transformation into Batman reflects viewers’ potential nostalgia for an irretrievable American political and cultural past and their own childhoods. Consequently, the ritual of watching Batman can confirm that there is a crisis (as Bruce Wayne’s changing into Batman does) and offer viewers the temporary fantasy of recovery, informed by the self-conscious admission that it is indeed a fantasy. Just as Batman will never extinguish all crime

101

Chapter 4

102

from Gotham City or recover his childhood innocence, the crises of personal and national identity that motivate the viewer will also never be resolved. This is the inherent tension that informs American political identity and mass culture. Bruce Wayne refuses to recover psychologically from the trauma because it defines his purpose in life as an adult; further, it explains Batman to the audience. The origin of Batman is so deeply ingrained in the character’s mythos, and such a key factor to understanding the character, that the television series rarely mentions it; the camp ethos must, per Sontag, deny tragedy. As a result, the absence of trauma confirms its underlying and motivating presence. In West’s first scene in the debut episode, Bruce Wayne meets a committee proposing to develop “anti-crime centers” in Gotham. Offering his full support, Bruce muses, “Perhaps if there had been anti-crime centers of the type you now propose when my own parents were murdered by dastardly criminals . . .” Bruce’s reverie is interrupted by Alfred, who lets his employer know that Commissioner Gordon requires his services as Batman. Thus the show quickly and from the very beginning legitimates Batman according to personal trauma but then never references it again, burying it under a camp aesthetic. In never being named, it takes on a more charged significance. Further, the fact that Bruce does not limit his response to the specific cause of his trauma (the individuals who killed his parents) but to all criminals confirms the intimate connection between personal trauma and collective crises and a comparable suppression by viewers. If Bruce needs to keep the trauma of his childhood open and available as an adult, then Batman viewers require an ongoing sense of crises for the perpetuation of American values into the future. Thus, both sides of the ideological spectrum must see their counterpart as a continually imminent threat, a tug-of-war between the residual and the emergent that fixes the dominant in a constant state of flux. The collapse of the object and subject binary indicated by Bruce Wayne’s performance of

Bat-Being

Batman (and, further, the performance of Bruce Wayne as timid and unheroic) is amplified by the constitution of both identities by way of actual objects and spaces. Bruce’s public identity is, of course, defined by his wealth, embodied by “stately Wayne Manor,” but also is indicated by his philanthropy, which reconfigures Gotham City as an extension of his identity. Numerous episodes indicate that his charitable work links the Wayne family name, via the Bruce Wayne Foundation, to various events and places within the city. Similarly, his corporate enterprise also rebrands the city with his name (e.g., the Bruce Wayne Ice Arena). More significantly, however, is the fact that Batman himself is the ultimate indication of Bruce Wayne’s wealth, equalizing that wealth with Bruce’s morality and mission for the city. Batman is a kind of object, the material manifestation of Bruce’s wealth, traumatic childhood, and righteous crusade. Thus, when we see the Bat-signal projected over Gotham City in the end credit sequence, the conflated economic power of Bruce Wayne and iconic significance of Batman equally confirm the utopian potential of the city as well as the dystopian elements that necessitate the existence of Batman. Further, Batman’s crime-fighting enterprise is heavily dependent on extravagant and unique technological gadgets only realizable by the combination of Bruce’s wealth and moral vision. Thus, in addition to his core objects used in nearly every episode (the Batmobile, the Batcomputer, the Bat-phone), Batman has a seemingly infinite supply of bat-devices at his disposal: a Batarang (a bat-shaped boomerang), Batzooka, BatGeiger counter, superpowered Bat-magnet, Bat-earplugs, Batblowtorch, and Super-Thermalized Bat-skivies. The show’s obsessive use of the “bat” prefix for a multitude of objects indicates the ways in which branded objects are used to displace trauma. They are a means by which one can confirm an individual as well as collective identity, given that these objects are saturated with idealized national values in their use by Batman. By extension, viewers’ purchase of “bat” branded commodities

103

Batmania at its most imaginative: a Batman hairstyle for women. (Courtesy of John Stacks)

Bat-Being

renders the act of consumption an ideologically neutral national value that makes national traumas invisible; however, in acts of textual poaching, viewers can inscribe their own “bat” texts in personal, highly individualistic turns that can challenge a dominant notion of national identity while affirming the inherent pluralism of American political and popular culture. The use of extra-textual objects or texts by viewers as a means of expressing dual identities (both for and against popular culture, both for and against hegemony) is constantly modeled on the show. Bat-objects continually assert Bruce Wayne’s identity by maintaining the difference between his identity and that of Batman, his creation. This point is sometimes literally made on the show. In “Batman Displays his Knowledge” Commissioner Gordon decides to call Bruce Wayne while Batman and Robin are present at police headquarters. Thinking quickly, Batman calls ahead to alert Alfred to use the Bat-syllable Device. When Gordon calls, Alfred types out responses that elicit a stilted, recorded response from the machine in Bruce’s voice. Putting down the phone, Gordon says, “It’s eerie, Batman. Every time I talk to Mr. Wayne I get the feeling I’m talking to you. . . . For a while I thought you and he were the same person. But here you are and I’ve just spoken with him on the phone. I guess that dissolves any tentative theory I may have harbored.” A chuckling Chief O’Hara chimes in, “Bruce Wayne is a millionaire playboy. Hardly a secret identity for Batman.” The gap between identities is maintained by gadgets produced by Wayne’s wealth and acumen and, in this instance, such technology literally objectifies the Bruce Wayne persona. Meanwhile, viewers cannot help but recognize the performance of the dual identity, because the voice provided by the Bat-syllable Device is so clearly artificial, and because, of course, we know that these two figures are the same man. By extension, viewers tacitly acknowledge not only their hyphenated identity as consumer-citizen but that identity contains a number of ideological self-contradictions. Further, viewers are compelled to admit

105

Chapter 4

106

that those “other” Americans (of different political beliefs, of another race or gender) are as much a constitutive part of America as Batman is of Bruce Wayne. Again and again on the show identity is expressed through objects so that the similarities between Batman and the villains he fights are more striking than their differences. A key trope of the show is the use of objects by the villains as a crime tool, as the goal of crime, and as a literal means of destroying Batman and Robin. While the Joker’s creation of his own utility belt (discussed in Chapter 3) is an obvious example of this, it is a routine condition of the show’s story lines. In “The Bookworm Turns”(20 April 1966) and “While Gotham City Burns” (21 April 1966), for example, the Bookworm (Roddy McDowall), who wears a suit made of book leather and drives a Bookmobile, uses an exploding book, a book that emits knockout gas, and a giant-sized cookbook so that he can realize his goal of stealing rare books. In other episodes, Batman and Robin nearly meet their doom in the form of a giant hourglass (“The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes,” 12 October 1966) and a giant coffee cup (“Catwoman Goes to College,” 22 February 1967). Further, Batman and Robin are frequently faced with being literally turned into objects. In the case of “Ice Spy” Mr. Freeze attempts to vaporize Batman and Robin, literally making them part of the ice rink at Bruce Wayne Ice Arena. In other episodes one or both of them is nearly transformed into life-size stamps (“A Piece of the Action,” 1 March 1967), a comic book (“The Joker’s Last Laugh,” 15 February 1967), a giant key (“The Impractical Joker,” 16 November 1966), perforated music rolls (“The Devil’s Fingers”), and Popsicles (“Green Ice,” 9 November 1966). The central value of objects is in their use, the ways in which they confirm identity through agency. If the use of various “bat” objects paradoxically shores up Bruce Wayne’s identity by sublimating it to Batman’s (with Bruce Wayne as the implicit “author” of Batman), then something similar occurs when viewers purchase and make their own “bat” objects or

Bat-Being

texts. If Bruce, through his remediated identity of Batman, needs idiosyncratic objects in support of his crime-fighting mission, then Americans, through their remediated identity as consumers, turn to the consumption and production of objects as a means of symbolically satisfying national values of individualism. Batman prompted a flood of ancillary merchandise that “accounted for 25 percent of the estimated total licensing business in the United States in 1966.”5 Items such as wrist radios, toothbrushes, toy phones, lamps, water pistols, bicycle ornaments, and utility belts bore the “bat” brand (usually in the form of the Batman name inside the silhouette of Batman’s head and batwings—the show’s title image). By purchasing bat-branded merchandise, consumers could be both Batman and Bruce Wayne simultaneously. Consequently, the surfeit of Batman-related objects and texts (authorized and unauthorized) mirror the collapse of object and subject performed on the show. In turn, the consumption of these objects and texts can even implicate spaces in this process. Consider that in addition to all of the authorized merchandise, the show inspired Batman-themed nightclubs. Additionally, the use of custommade Batman merchandise at home further links the viewer to the figure of Bruce Wayne/Batman. After all, Bruce Wayne’s arsenal of gadgets marks him more as a producer than a consumer. The production process is both ostensibly rational yet undeniably irrational on Batman. We don’t know how Bruce Wayne made his own Batmobile or any of the other bat-items at his disposal, but we accept that it is somehow the result of his superior morality, intellect, and wealth. Thus Wayne Manor is the source of the fantastic, just as the viewer’s own home is as well by virtue of viewing Batman and the consumption and production of bat objects. If camp is predicated on an awareness of Being-as-Playinga-Role, then merchandising provides ready-made props to actualize such awareness. This is apparent in two significant examples of ancillary bat-merchandise: songs released by West

107

Chapter 4

108

and Ward in 1966. In West’s case, the picture sleeve of “Miranda,” which features a composite image of West as himself in the foreground and as Batman in the background, emphasizes the duality of the performer,. This duality is extended in the song’s lyrics, a mix of West’s singing with dialogue. Without using the name Batman (West’s persona is “Bruce”), the song goes to great lengths to reference the show, from a Dozier-esque voice-over narrator to either an uncredited Burt Ward or a sound-alike appearing as “Boy Genius” to report on criminal threats to the city. The basic conceit is that Bruce’s object of affection, Miranda, wants him to remove his mask. When he finally relents, she implores him to put it back on, confirming the fan’s preference for the superhero over the secret identity, as well as for the role over the actor. With Ward’s Frank Zappa– produced single “Boy Wonder, I Love You” those differences are ironically conflated. This song features Ward, in the persona of Robin, reading excerpts from an actual fan letter in which the young female viewer expresses her romantic desire for Robin. This letter confirms the fan’s desire to mitigate the divide between fantasy and reality, the public and the private. The conceit of the superhero as object of adolescent romantic interest is exploited by Zappa’s production, which features background singers cooing the title over syrupy music and canned sounds of screaming female groupies. Both songs play out the fantasy of an intimate relationship with a fictional icon, and they make the listener a fictionalized participant in the fantasy. This imagined contact produces a new, utopian self-image for the listener. Consequently, the commodity value of Batman and Robin for many of the show’s viewers resides in their capacity to reflect the image of an imagined secret self. Mass culture promises such an image and an emotional confirmation of one’s perceived authenticity through consumption. As each indicates, affect is the primary indication of the authentic experience; in both cases, the fan’s subjectivity is confirmed by her love of the role the actor plays, not the

Bat-Being

actor himself. Batman allowed viewers to playfully engage with this essential function of mass culture. The expression of this other self is safely mediated by the structures of popular culture and consumerism and of national values, the latter doubly reinforced when the superhero is the affect-producing object of consumption. Consider a 1966 advertisement, in which children are offered the liberating promise of “becoming” the superhero upon convincing adult family members to purchase a General Electric television set. When affirmed through the domesticated vehicles of mass culture consumption and the nation, a secret self is safely contained by normative ideological structures. Normative ideology intersects with fantasies of transformation into the extraordinary. Just as Bruce Wayne transcends the ordinary within the confines of his home, and much as Adam West overcomes his own quotidian background by way of his stardom, the viewer’s transformative agency is actualized at home. The privilege and pleasures derived from crossing social boundaries (paradoxically in order to repel other threats to those boundaries) originate in and are safely contained by the home. Stately Wayne Manor is the headquarters of the philanthropic, traumatized millionaire son of Gotham, and beneath the manor is the Batcave, the secret excessive Other to hegemonic order, physically separate from but ideologically linked to the symbol of American ideals above. Just as the performances of transformation (by Bruce Wayne into Batman, by the actors into their roles) confirm Raymond Williams’ notion of mobile privatization, the merchandising of Batman also transforms the everyday into the exotic. The highly affective aesthetic register of the program encouraged viewers to immerse themselves in not simply a fantastic location but an extraordinary subjectivity as an active consumer, as required by parody. Batman’s design and advertising contributes significantly to its project of personalizing mass consumption. The show’s art director, Serge Krizman, said he “had to evoke the memories of those who read” the comic books and create “a

109

The promise of transformation as a special offer from General Electric.

Bat-Being

uniform look for Batman, kind of like a corporate identity. . . .  Even the effects and gadgets were color-coordinated.”6 This engagement of uniformity and personal memory also informed ABC’s publicity campaign prior to Batman’s debut, as indicated by the pressbook that ABC distributed in anticipation of the show. Their use of the catchphrase “Batman is Coming!” and Bat-signal image depend upon potential viewers already having an idea of who or what “Batman” is, and that conception of this superhero has been shaped by previous encounters with Batman as a mass culture sign.7 A February 1966 issue of Time noted, “Batman would have attracted nobody but preschoolers were it not for ABC’s ingenious promotion efforts. . . . Every hour on the hour, television announcements bleated the imminent arrival of the Caped Crusader. Hordes of people who recalled Bob Kane’s comic book creation as well as the 1943 movie . . . pushed their toddlers out of the way to get a good look at the TV set.”8 As Dozier observed, “once you lose the adult audience in television, then advertisers aren’t interested in you anymore.”9 Art design and advertising were essential tools then in the show’s synthesis of adult and child subjectivity, the past and the present, reality and fantasy because they map out the boundaries within which viewers could safely actualize their fantasies of transformation. As a result, the comic books become a tacit advertisement for the series and vice versa. This underscores the conflation of consumer and producer subjectivity via the textual object. This relationship is evident on the cover for Batman #183 (August 1966) in which we see Batman in the Batcave, reclining in front of a television set that is about to broadcast The Adventures of Batman (with a slightly modified version of the logo from ABC’s series prominent on the screen). To his side, Robin holds the red “hot-line” (a conceit original to the show, not the comic books) and urges Batman to action. The Caped Crusader, however, has other plans for his evening and replies, “Not tonight, kid! I’m staying in the Batcave to watch myself on television!”

111

Chapter 4

112

Further, the cover’s use of the phrase “Holy Emergency!” confirms the show, not the comic books, as the determinant textual iteration of Batman. The cover indicates the collapse of the televisual into the domestic; the doubly represented commodity marker Batman stands in for viewers, validating their desire to watch Batman by the indication that it is his own desire as well. Finally, the cover invites the reader to act as a detective, a la Batman and Robin, when it offers that the cover betrays a “telltale clue.” We become the fantastic subject through our everyday consumption of Batman, just as he becomes rather ordinary in his desire to watch television. This process is key to the promotional photo of Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig reading Batgirl’s comic book debut (discussed in Chapter 2). Here the affective nature of viewer/reader subjectivity is performed by Craig in her astonished expression. Implicitly she recognizes her fantastic alter ego, and viewers recognize themselves in the figure of Craig, marked as both ordinary and extraordinary. As we have seen, this confirms the governing conceit of the show: that the transition into fantasy is made possible by the collapse of the adult/child and producer/consumer binaries. The instantaneous transformation promised by consumption is reflected in the show’s regular portrayal of the switch from secret identity to superhero identity. Typically when Bruce and Dick slide down the Bat-poles the viewer is treated to one of the shows’ primary visual gags: they begin the slide in their civilian clothes and end it moments later in their superhero costumes. The nearly instant change from the everyday to the fantastic is represented in the prologue of most of the episodes by the cut from the initial slide down the Bat-poles to the credit sequence, which shows us Batman and Robin in comic book– style artwork, fighting criminals while the Batman theme song plays. The theme song, with its highly distinctive melody and memorable “Batman!” chorus, is the textual glue that holds together this translation from the live-action narrative to the comic book remediation of ritual combat. It recurs later in each

The border between the everyday and the fantastic collapses in the act of watching television. (™ and © DC Comics. Used with permission.)

Chapter 4

114

episode when Batman and Robin fight the villains accompanied by a derivation of the theme song and the show’s famous onomatopoeic inserts. The music and the visuals mediate the affective exchange between the everyday and the fantastic that occurs each (bat) time the show is watched at home. Importantly, the theme song remains one of the most recognizable and recirculated elements of Batman, as distinguishing a trait as the show’s use of primary colors and oversized props, which contributed significantly to its hip and campy aesthetic. Written by noted jazz composer and arranger Neal Hefti, the song was covered by a plethora of popular artists including Al Hirt, Link Wray, the Standells, and the Who. At the same time, other artists used its highly recognizable riff and “Batman!” vocal refrain as the basis for original compositions. Jan and Dean’s 1966 song “Batman” (from the album Jan and Dean Meet Batman) uses the song as a framework for their own retelling of Batman’s origin that musically evokes their 1963 hit “Surf City.” The song is punctuated by a pause in the music and the voices of a narrator and an actor as Bruce Wayne reciting lines drawn directly from the 1939 comic book origin of the character. Accompanied by sound effects and a very Cesar Romero–like Joker laugh, this aural remediation of the comic book inevitably evokes the television series. The song affirms the textual authority of Batman by conflating it with the comic book origin. In doing so, Jan and Dean obscure the distinction between producers and consumers, placing themselves as intermediaries between both camps; as pop stars they have the ability to actualize and represent the fan fantasy of “meeting” Batman and Robin. This position is further confirmed by another song on their album, the self-parodic “The Origin of Captain Jan & Dean the Boy Blunder,” and the album’s packaging. The cover features images of Batman and Robin taken directly from comic books, and the liner notes assert: “And now Batman has come to television. . . . It is to this show and its stars that Jan and Dean dedicate this album in the hope that all who

Bat-Being

hear it will come to enjoy the adventures of the Dynamic Duo as much as we do.” The combination of comic book graphics, the remediated theme song, and an ambivalent attitude of both homage and parody place this album in the same nexus of affective fantasy as the show’s credit sequence, embodying a space in which consumers can reimagine their own relationship to Batman. Consider the 1968 song “Bat Poem,” released by the beat poetry group the Liverpool Scene, which hangs an acidic poetry recitation on the framework of Hefti’s theme song. The lyrics are styled as a direct address to Batman, a wry call for help in matters both romantic (“Take me where the girls are pretty, Batman. . . . The Bat-Pill makes them all say yes, Batman.”) and political (“Help us out in Vietnam, Batman./ Help us drop that Bat-Napalm, Batman.”). The sarcasm is almost palpable when the vocalist intones, “Show me what I have to do, Batman./ ’cause I want to be like you, Batman.” While the song seems to indict Batman as a sign of American cultural and military imperialism, its direct quotation of the television show suggests the power of Batman as a vehicle for personal transformation and political change. When the vocalist exhorts Batman to “help us spread democracy” by getting the Vietcong “high on LSD,” the politicized power of play authorized by camp and an ironic dialogue with mass culture exemplified by much of Pop art is on full display. As Arthur C. Danto notes, “Warhol’s thought that anything could be art was a model, in a way, for the hope that human beings could be anything they chose, once the divisions that had defined the culture were overthrown.”10 This is the social power that Batman authorized, the capacity to play with social boundaries, a power that could only be fully realized beyond the show’s own limitations as a major network program. “Bat Poem” not only offers further proof of the ways in which the superhero was used at this time as a discursive political tool but it also reflects the ways in which the superhero was increasingly available in this period as a reflection of shifting cultural

115

Chapter 4

116

paradigms in America. As a major network television program, Batman certainly did not commit itself to the political skewering offered by the Liverpool Scene, but it did attempt to appeal to that emergent zeitgeist as a means of speaking to a larger and growing ambivalence about what it meant to be American. These seismic shifts in American political culture were partially managed by pop culture texts such as Batman because such texts were readily available for a variety of ideological uses by producers and consumers alike. Such availability is encouraged by the lack of clear authorship in regard to Batman. Due to a legal agreement he made with National Periodicals (later renamed DC Comics), original Batman artist Bob Kane has always been given exclusive credit for creating the character. His signature appeared at the beginning of every Batman comic book for decades, giving it a kind of branding power equivalent to the Batman and DC logos. Yet, Kane’s claims to sole authorship were openly contested by fan and early comic book historian Dr. Jerry Bails in a 1965 fanzine. In September 1965 Kane wrote an open letter to the fanzine Batmania in response to Bail’s contention that Batman’s original writer, Bill Finger, should be given at least co-creator credit. Emphatically claiming exclusive authorship of Batman and Robin, Kane writes, “I feel that any ‘immortality’ that Batman enjoys came from my original style.” 11 Linking himself to the television series that was being developed at that time, Kane notes, “They will have some of the villains that I created, The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman, etc. This is going to be the ‘in’ show to watch and will be real ‘camp.’ ”12 Taking this association with the show’s camp sensibility further, he goes on to write, “I am planning a one-man art show of original Batman oil paintings that I will show in New York City. . . . The prices of the paintings will be quite high, but I am counting on the rich patrons of ‘Pop Art’ to buy them.”13 Kane shores up his claims to sole authorship of Batman by linking himself to the television show (though Kane was never a consultant for the series) and

Bat-Being

by attempting to co-opt the Pop art movement that had already co-opted him. In doing so, Kane positioned himself as author of an impending “mass camp” take on “his” character by ABC, as well as the more prestigious “high camp” appropriation of Batman by Pop artists. Yet, comic book historians now agree that Finger (who, incidentally, wrote two episodes of the series) not only co-created Batman but that he co-created Robin, the Penguin, and Catwoman with Kane, the Riddler with artist Dick Sprang, and the Joker with artist Jerry Robinson (with input from Kane). Kane’s attempts to exploit the renewed interest in Batman is ironic, given that much of this interest was fueled by the destabilization of authorship and ownership offered by Pop art and camp. Further, Kane’s claim requires that we ignore the decades’ worth of editors, writers, and artists responsible for Batman comic books since 1939 whose work had a much more direct influence on the aesthetics of the show than Kane’s. Batman’s parodic register, which made it so appealing to adults, is enhanced by this lack of clear authorship. The transformative promise of parody is derived from its implicit critique of the authority of authorship, since parody (as an iteration of textual poaching) is the act of a reader becoming a producer through interpretive remediation. Final authorship is given to individual consumers through a parodic tone that requires interpretive strategies of resistance to mass culture. Importantly, as Linda Hutcheon notes, parody is “a method of inscribing continuity while permitting a critical distance.”14 In questioning the legitimacy of texts, parody challenges the role of authorship, acknowledging that the audience is as much a participant in authoring as the “official” author is. Yet, as Hutcheon states, “parody’s transgressions ultimately remain authorized . . . by the very norm it seeks to subvert.”15 By “inscribing the mocked conventions onto itself,” the parody guarantees the perpetuation of those conventions and consumers’ sense of participation in and mastery over their articulation.16

117

Chapter 4

118

This mastery is evident in the plethora of non-authorized Batman related texts that were produced during the show’s original run, such as “Bat Poem.” If, following the dictates of Pop art, viewers of the show could recreate themselves as individual cultural producers, the strongly foregrounded quotation marks around American identity that attend the superhero could correspond to a self-reinvention in terms of national identity. Consider the example of the 1967 comedy album by Marty Allen and Steve Rossi titled The Adventures of Batman & Rubin (Jewish Boy Wonder) that features the comedians on the cover in appropriately parodic Batman and Robin costumes, sans masks, with a word balloon from Rubin (Allen) exclaiming, “Holy bagels Batman, we left our masks in the Batcave!” The album itself is a sketch about a Jewish boy, Rubin, who reads 300 comic books a day, much to the consternation of his parents, who stereotypically wonder why their boy doesn’t want to become a doctor. The story begins with Rubin, exhausted by a day reading comic books, falling asleep and dreaming he is “Rubin, the Boy Wonder,” combating the Riddler and Catwoman alongside Batman. Rubin’s Jewishness is in tension with the Batman meta-text (Rubin struggles to be a “proper” Boy Wonder) and explicit references to the television show mark the series as both authorizing source and target of Allen and Rossi’s parody. For example, Batman and Rubin take their “nuclear Batmobile” to the Jewish discotheque Let My People Go-Go, where Batman dances the Batusi in a direct remediation of the source scene in the debut episode of the series. Mired in the plot to capture the villains, Rubin exclaims at one point, “Catwoman, Batman, Penguin. I’m the only human being in this whole meshuggeneh album!” More than simply a reflexive moment in which the producer flags his subjectivity as consumer, this line of dialogue articulates the central joke of the album: the relationship between Batman (and its own ambivalent take on American identity) and a Jewish-American identity. When the “secret” language of Jewish culture informs a superhero parody (when the masks are

Bat-Being

off), the consumer asserts a degree of mastery over the homogenization of mass culture and confirms the latent heterogeneity being suppressed in the genre. Through parody, the album puts the utopian gestures of the superhero in conversation with a religious and ethnic identity outside the boundaries of homogenized mass culture. The power of parody to safely allow Jewish comedians to assert a cultural identity through the figure of the superhero confirms the pluralistic nature of that figure, enhancing that aspect of the superhero as a symbol of America. Conversely, it satisfies the myth of painless assimilation into a melting pot of American identity that safely acknowledges cultural, religious, and ethnic difference primarily as commodities. Of further interest, the front cover of the album emphatically pronounces: “Created and written by Bob Kane (creator of Batman & Robin).” A photograph of Kane standing beside an illustration of Batman and Robin appears on the back cover of the album accompanied by a word balloon in which the artist notes, among other things, that he appears as an actor on the record. This image and text both literally visualizes Kane’s authorship and embeds him in the diegetic fantasy of his creation; both maneuvers then authorize Kane’s “coming out” as Jewish on this album. (He was born Robert Kahn.) This produces a paradox, for the implicit revelation of Kane’s Jewishness marks Batman and Robin as products of Jewish-American culture. Yet the value of the parody album is the necessary confirmation of the dominant reading of Batman and Robin as “not Jewish”— only Rubin and his parents use Yiddish; Batman and the villains are gentile in their speech. The parody is always understood as defined and contained in contrast to its subject, which must retain a dominant reading in order to give the parody its power. The limits of the Batman/Jewish linkage are apparent, as consumers can choose to minimize or ignore the connection; the album was essentially buried among the avalanche of Batman paraphernalia of the period and likely was meant to appeal primarily to a Jewish audience.

119

Chapter 4

120

What is being articulated through the parody is a conversation between the “authentic” personal voices of the Jewish producers and mass culture as a reflection of national hegemony. Yet it is from within mass culture that this critique emanates, problematizing the binary and suggesting that the affirmation of an authentic self comes from the dialogue between individual and mass culture, not by their separation. Even more so than the series itself, The Adventures of Batman & Rubin remedies the paralysis of nostalgia and the inertia of cyclical mass production and consumption by personalizing the mass culture text. At the same time, it confirms the power of mass culture and our affection for it because this culture can become a vehicle by which difference is affirmed as a significant and positive force. Therefore, such texts reinscribe pluralism as a defining characteristic on the surface of the nation. The deconstruction of the superhero genre in Batman points toward a national desire for history, and the impossibility of realizing it, by indicating that the historicizing and mythologizing national project of superhero texts can only be a commodified and purely symbolic gesture toward satisfying that desire. Comparably, the rewriting of Robin as Jewish in The Adventures of Batman & Rubin confirms that discrete and distinct ethnic and religious identities are typically and selectively suppressed by mass culture and the hegemonic American historical narrative. Through such suppression, the histories attached to those distinct identities are circumvented within the broader cultural landscape and can only be recognized in either hidden form or at particular moments that allow for safe irruptions of non-normative identity. The Adventures of Batman & Rubin could only have been released after Batman was a hit—in large part because it spoke to a very specific moment in American history in which the functions of production and consumption were being openly questioned and in which traditional notions of American identity were being explicitly critiqued.

Bat-Being

Finally, the cultural meaning of authorship was a primary target of interrogation by Batman. This mediation on authorship had tremendous value because it was applied to new considerations of what constituted a text—not simply the pop culture object but the individual and the nation as well. The utopian promise of the superhero mirrors that of America: transformative individualism linked to the collective. Batman briefly allowed a diverse and large American audience the opportunity to collectively affirm the desirability and the limits of these twin utopian impulses neatly contained in the patently absurd and thus attractive figure of Batman. After all, utopia is most useful in our lives as an impossible ideal imagined in the past (in one’s childhood and in the nation’s history) or projected into the future. We turn to the superhero, just as we do the nation, wishing for something better in ourselves and the world around us because both the superhero and the nation, entwined in popular culture, reassure us that the best is always yet to come.

121

Conclusion

Batman Forever

Batman will be ours again some day, long, long after the plastic Batarangs have joined the ersatz coonskin hats in that great surplus warehouse called Yesteryear. Letter to the editor, Batmania No. 11 (July 1966)

O

ne of the most interesting aspects regarding Batman is that, since its debut, so many Batman fans have identified themselves as “anti-fans” of the series. That is, Batman has been routinely regarded by such fans as the ultimate “bad” Batman text, the one that most egregiously violates a perceived essence of the character as a dark vigilante. The April 1966 issue of the fanzine Batmania printed a letter written by fan Tom Fagan to Dozier, expressing his unhappiness with the show. Fagan wrote, “Frankly, I am disappointed. . . . I understand the plan was to reach the adult viewers through the ‘camp’ or ‘Pop art’ appeal. ‘Camp’ is an overworked and pretentious word, belonging to . . . smug writers . . . and a small segment of the public who only feel secure in laughing at what others enjoy. Costumed hero shows do not have to be ‘camp.’ ”1 Ironically, Fagan’s letter to Dozier realized a primary camp ethos in its violation of the

123

Conclusion

124

imagined barrier between producers and consumers. Dozier himself actualized this in a letter he wrote to Batmania founder and editor Biljo White, which White reprinted in the February 1966 issue. It read, in part, “Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and I are of course familiar with your periodical, having seen several of the earlier issues as part of our initial research. . . . We are proud to be fellow BATMANIANS or BATMANIACS, whichever seems more applicable.”2 While Batman’s parodic tone is the primary reason fans such as Fagan have historically regarded the series as the preeminent bad Batman text, in actuality this tone is the very strategy by which it should be considered a breakthrough television program. As I have argued, unlike any television show before it, Batman used the subversive parody of camp to authorize consumer agency and textual fluidity. Yet, for many fans unwilling or unable to recognize the potential this strategy had for authorizing textual play of any variety, most have hearkened to a nostalgic and heavily romanticized vision of the character in his first year, before the introduction of Robin and the subsequent years of bat-absurdities that, for these fans, reached its nadir with the series. Subsequently, consumers and producers alike have looked toward Batman as an object to be saved with themselves as its superheroic rescuers. An effort in the comic books to “recuperate” Batman from the perceived damage done by the show first occurred in the early 1970s in the work of writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams. Said Adams, “I think the TV show ran roughshod over the Batman character, and DC Comics followed suit. I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody what Batman is about. It’s just sometimes you lose track of things.”3 This attitude is also advanced by Frank Miller, who wrote and drew a grim reimagining of Batman in the future (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986)) and wrote the comic book miniseries Batman: Year One (1987) as a “rebooted” origin story that, like the work of O’Neil and Adams, emphasizes a dark

Batman Forever

and realistic tone. Miller wrote in his afterword to the collected edition of Batman: Year One, “If your only memory of Batman is that of Adam West and Burt Ward exchanging camped-out quips while clobbering slumming guest stars Vincent Price and Cesar Romero, I hope this book will come as a surprise. For me, Batman was never funny.” And for Michael Uslan, executive producer of every feature-length Batman film made from 1989 to 2012, watching the series as a child motivated his desire to see a more serious version of the character on the big screen: “I . . . swore an oath just like young Bruce Wayne had. . . . Someday, somehow I would eliminate these three little words from the collective consciousness of the world culture: Pow! Zap! and Wham! I would restore Batman to his true and rightful identity as the Dark Knight.”4 Yet, despite this avalanche of disdain, the show retains a position of great personal importance for other professionals and fans. In the same collected edition of Batman: Year One that features Miller’s dismissive reference to the series, that title’s artist, David Mazzucchelli, offers a comic book–style autobiography in which he confides, “I can’t remember if my first encounter with Batman was through television or print, but my childhood memories neatly incorporate both. . . . the Adam West TV show is an extremely faithful translation of a comic book into live action.” And in 2005 brothers Lee and Michael Allred produced a story titled “Batman A-Go-Go!” for DC Comics that is an explicit homage to the series. According to Lee Allred, “Mike’s original plan for ‘Batman A-Go-Go’ was a straight-up juxtaposition of visuals of the campy ’60s Batman against a dark, post–Dark Knight storyline.”5 Explaining why the Riddler was the villain of their story, Michael Allred replied, “Easy. The Batman TV show’s first episode with the Riddler is one of my earliest childhood memories.”6 While it is tempting to consider Christopher Nolan’s films Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) as the most recent repudiation of the

125

Conclusion

126

television series (Adam West himself has quipped, “They’ve got the ‘Dark Knight,’ and I was the bright knight.”7), Nolan’s own evaluation of his work unexpectedly places it closer to the television show than the series’ anti-fans would probably like: “The fans can argue about what defines Batman, but the heroism— the positivity of what he’s actually doing—isn’t up for discussion. Again, it’s not . . . about making him darker.”8 It becomes impossible to ignore the importance of the television series not only to confirm the “authenticity” of darker representations of the character but also to admit that the boundary between these representations is porous at best. Batman seized upon the marginalized status of both television and comic books to comment on the pervasive role of mass culture in the everyday. In doing so, the series helped pave the way for subsequent remediations of the character in comic books and film (even those conceived of as responses to the show itself), as well as subsequent generations of reflexive television programs, including Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975–present) and 30 Rock (NBC, 2006–2013), as well as the animated series The Simpsons (Fox, 1989–present) and Family Guy (Fox, 1998–2002, 2005–present). In the latter program, Adam West provides the voice for Mayor Adam West, an eccentric takeoff on the actor’s persona. Further, West’s take on Batman directly influenced Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of the superhero Big Daddy in Kick-Ass (directed by Matthew Vaughn, 2010), in which he wears a very Batman-esque costume and laboriously enunciates his lines as if the fate of the world hangs on every syllable. In an interview, Cage, a lifelong superhero fan, could just as well have been speaking of his own approach to the role when he said of his character’s decision to become a superhero: “Adam West would’ve been the Batman that he grew up with. That would be the Batman that would help him get the job done.”9 As the vociferous declarations of Fagan, Adams, Miller, and Uslan suggest, the television show is actually required by its anti-fans as the difference in the serial repetition of the

Batman Forever

character. As with the national values that the superhero represents, crisis is the primary fuel of superhero narratives, and it is also the governing ethos of the trans-media consumption of those narratives, bonding consumer, text, and nation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Batman, a superhero defined, as most are, by crisis, but whose reception is also marked by fans in these terms of constant crises of integrity and authenticity. This is evidenced, for example, by fans’ heated responses to the slide back to camp with Batman and Robin (directed by Joel Schumacher, 1997) and its notorious Bat-nippled costume. For the fans of the series, its unavailability on DVD is the crisis they contend with. A post on the Facebook page “Holy Holdup! Put ’60s Batman on DVD” demands that “the greatest TV show of all time needs to be on DVD so new generations of fans can enjoy it! Let’s digitally preserve its legacy and perpetuate its legend.” The continued popularity of a series that has not yet been released on video is partly explained by Lynn Spigel and Henry Jenkins’ observation that baby boomers have “used memories of Batman to evoke their own personal identity and explain their particular relationship to the social world.”10 The nostalgic value of Batman is that, ironically, it allows fans to circumvent the paralysis of looking backward. Forever rooted in the mid-1960s, the show’s essential spirit is always forward-looking, perpetually authorizing reinvention and play for its fans. Whether fans of the character care to admit to its influence or not, Batman signaled an important shift in the cultural currents of America, asserting that remediating popular culture, expressing one’s personal connection to it is as valid (and valuable) as consuming it. That such remediations and assertions are particularly relevant during times of crisis speaks to the ongoing appeal of the superhero genre and the enduring significance of Batman. Just as the Caped Crusader forever patrols the rooftops and streets of Gotham City, as long as we need it, Batman will always be there for us, through whichever lens we choose to see it and ourselves.

127

Notes

Introduction

1. Adler, 43. 2. Champlin, C17. 3. Scivally, 64. 4. Semple. www.variety.com/article/VR1117988712/ 5. Scivally, 67. 6. Spigel and Jenkins, 143. 7. Sontag, 275, 280 8. Ibid, 285. 9. Wright, 57. 10. Ibid, 24, 42. 11. Feiffer, 18. 12. Baker, 38. 13. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 2. 14. Wertham, 190. 15. Hall, 228. 16. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 21. 17. Cohen, 109. 18. Ibid, 119. 18. Ibid, 127. 20. Whitney, 16. 21. Klinger, 134. 22. Newman and Benton, 109. Newman and Benton, incidentally, wrote the 1965 Superman musical It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman.

129

Notes

23. Ibid, 287, 301. 24. Cohen, 309. Chapter 1

130

1. Adler, 109. 2. Sternheimer, 181. 3. Wright, 31. 4. Kane, 45. 5. Altman, 198–99. 6. Toby Miller, 17. 7. Taylor, 35. 8. Ibid, 37–38. 9. Ibid, 39. 10. Ibid, 40. 11. Toby Miller, 18. 12. Silverstone, 55. 13. Gray, 87. 14. Boorstin, 5. 15. Ibid, 39. 16. Hamamoto, 2. 17. Ibid, 72–73. Chapter 2

1. Adler, 97. 2. D’acci, 88. 3. Hall, 228. 4. Hamamoto, 2–3. 5. Ibid, 8. 6. Ibid, 62. 7. Bradley, xii. 8. Luckett, 85. 9. Lehman, 73. 10. Counts, “Batgirl Casebook,” 50. 11. Scivally, 118. 12. Buck. 13. Counts, “Batgirl Casebook,” 50. 14. While Robin is given an origin in the comic books similar to Batman’s (each witness the murder of his parents at the hands of criminals), no origin is mentioned in the series.

Chapter 3

1. Adler, 102. 2. Garcia, “Camping Up the Comics,” 51. 3. Scivally 115. 4. Sontag 279–80. 5. Sternheimer, 120, 21. 6. Ibid, 153. 7. Kitt, Confessions of a Sex Kitten, 249. 8. Scivally 71 9. Garcia, “Camping Up the Comics,” 18. 10. Scivally, 73. 11. Eisner, 111. 12. Skow, 94. 13. Adler, 9. 14. Scivally, 95. 15. Tellingly, the table of contents in an issue of 16 mistakenly promises an article on Burt Ward and “Adam Smith.” 16. “Adam West: Must He Die So Young?” 54.

Notes

15. Hamamoto, 18. 16. Counts, “Some Call Her Batgirl,” 60. 17. King, 133. 18. Scivally, 90. 19. Counts, “The Many Lives of the Catwoman,” 71. 20. Murray, 203. 21. MacDonald, 44. 22. Ibid, 107. 23. Hamamoto, 43. 24. Turner, 23. 25. Sternheimer, 157. 26. Scivally, 89. 27. Flora. www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200609/eartha-kitt-shegrowls-she-purrs 28. “Eartha Kitt Still Sizzling.” www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=17716269 29. Kitt, Alone with Me, 245–46. 30. Ibid, 253–54. 31. Danny Miller. www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-miller/eartha-kitt-ciatarget_b_153684.html

131

Notes

132

17. Scivally, 95. 18. Voger, 21. 19. Nazzaro, 50. 20. Garcia, “Camping Up the Comics,” 51. 21. Adler, 120. 22. Garcia, “The Joker: Cesar Romero on Being Crime’s Clown Prince,” 42. 23. Boone 24. Van Hise, 51–52. 25. Eisner, 123. 26. Ibid, 79. 27. Ibid, 79. 28. Pyron, 156. 29. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 26. 30. Winick, 23. 31. West, 146–47. 32. Pyron, 175. 33. Ibid, 289. 34. Garber, 356, 16. 35. Ibid, 357. 36. Bukatman, 215. 37. Danto, 3. Chapter 4



1. Adler, 96. 2. Desris, 11. 3. Garcia, “Lorenzo Semple, Guru of Camp,” 45. 4. Ibid, 18. 5. Santo, 70. 6. Garcia, “Comic Book Art Direction,” 22. 7. The catchphrase is an obvious spoof of Capitol Records’ “The Beatles Are Coming!” publicity campaign of 1963, signaling the show’s reflexive relationship to mass culture. This echoes the appropriation in 1964 of the term “Beatlemania” by Batmania fanzine publisher Biljo White. 8. “Television: Holy Flypaper!” www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/ 0,33009,842413,00.html. Additionally, Batman controversially expanded to four the traditional three commercial breaks allotted to a 30-minute program. 9. Van Hise, 133.

Notes

10. Danto, 4. 11. Batmania, No. 17 (September 1967), 4. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Hutcheon, 20. 15. Ibid, 75. 16. Ibid, 75. Conclusion

1. Batmania, No. 10 (April 1966), 15–16. 2. Batmania No. 9 (February 1966), 5. 3. Kronenberg, 130. 4. Uslan, 62. 5. Eury, 84. 6. Ibid, 85. 7. Boucher. 8. Holleran. 9. Wallace. www.wired.com/underwire/2010/04/nicolas-cage/ 10. Spigel and Jenkins, 136.

133

Bibliography

“Adam West: Must He Die So Young?” Movie Mirror, Vol. 10, No. 10, August 1966, pp. 20, 52–54. Adler, Bill. Bill Adler’s Funniest Fan Letters to Batman. New York: Signet Books. 1966. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute. 1999. Baker, Russell. “Television’s Bat Burlesque.” New York Times, February 8, 1966, Sec. 1, p. 38. “Batman and Robin Unmask Each Other!” 16 Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2, July 1966, pp. 62–63. Batmania, No. 9, February 1966. ———. No. 10, April 1966. ———. No. 11, July 1966. ———. No. 17, September 1967. Boone, Jean. “Interview with the Cast of Batman, The Movie.” 1966. www. texasarchive.org/library/index.phop/Jean_Boone_-_Interview_with _Cast_of_Batman,_The_Movie_(1966) Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper & Row. 1964. Boucher, Geoff. “Adam West Gets Back in the Batmobile,” Hero Complex, March 20, 2009. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2009/03/20/ adam-west-bac-2/ Bradley, Patricia. Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism 1963– 1975. Jackson, MS: The University Press of Mississippi. 2003.

135

Bibliography

136

Brooker, Will. Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon. New York: Continuum. 2000. Buck, Jerry. “TV Today: Toys, Gimmicks Pile-Up Profits for Shows.” The Chicago Tribune, Nov. 10, 1967, p. SCL A7. Bukatman, Scott. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1993. Champlin, Charles. “Taking a Bat at Batman . . . Plonk!” The Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1966, p. C17. Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage Books. 2004. Counts, Kyle. “Batgirl Casebook.” Comics Scene Yearbook, No. 1, 1992, pp. 48–52. ———. “The Many Lives of the Catwoman.” Starlog, No. 148, November 1989, pp. 23–26, 71. ———. “Some Call Her Batgirl.” Starlog Yearbook, Vol. 8, May 1991, pp. 59–62, 73. D’acci, Julie. “Nobody’s Woman? Honey West and the New Sexuality.” In The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict. Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin, editors. New York: Routledge. 1997, pp. 72–93. Danto, Arthur C. Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 1992. Desris, Joe, “Episode Guide,” Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No.6/Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 11–62. “Eartha Kitt Still Sizzling.” National Public Radio, December 31, 2007. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17716269 Eisner, Joel. The Official Batman Batbook. Chicago: Contemporary Books. 1986. Eury, Michael. “Batman-A-Go-Go!: An Interview with Michael Allred and Lee Allred.” In The Batman Companion. Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg, editors. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing. 2009, pp. 84–85. Feiffer, Jules. The Great Comic Book Heroes. New York: Bonanza Books. 1965. Flora, Carlin. “Eartha Kitt: She Growls, She Purrs.” Psychology Today, September 1, 2006. www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200609/eartha-kitt -she-growls-she-purrs Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge. 1992.

Bibliography

Garcia, Bob. “Camping Up the Comics,” Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No.6/Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 8–63. ———.“The Joker: Cesar Romero on Being Crime’s Clown Prince,” Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No.6/Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1994, p. 42. ———. “Comic Book Art Direction,” Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No.6/Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 22–25. ———. “Lorenzo Semple, Guru of Camp,” Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, No.6/ Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 44–45. Gray, Jonathan. Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. New York: Routledge. 2006. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular.’ ” In People’s History and Socialist Theory. Raphael Samuel, editor. Boston: Routledge. 1981, pp. 227–40. Hamamoto, Darrell Y. Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology. New York: Praeger. 1989. Holleran, Scott. “Wing Kid: An Interview with Christopher Nolan,” October 20, 2005. www.boxofficemojo.com/features/?id=1921&p=.htm Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. 2000. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press. 2006. ———. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. 1992. Kane, Bob. Batman & Me. Forestville, CA: Eclipse Books. 1989. King, Geoff. Film Comedy. London: Wallflower Press. 2002. Kitt, Eartha. Alone with Me. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. 1976. ———. Confessions of a Sex Kitten. London: Barricade Books Inc. 1989. Klinger, Barbara. Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 1994. Kronenberg, Michael. “Breathing Life into Batman: An Interview with Neal Adams.” In The Batman Companion. Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg, editors. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing. 2009, pp. 128–47. Lehman, Katherine J. Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 2011. Luckett, Moya. “A Moral Crisis in Prime Time: Peyton Place and the Rise of the Single Girl.” In Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz, editors. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1999, pp. 75–97.

137

Bibliography

138

MacDonald, J. Fred. Blacks and White TV: Afro-Americans in Television since 1948. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers. 1983. Miller, Danny. “Eartha Kitt, CIA Target.” Huffington Post, December 27, 2008. www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-miller/eartha-kitt-cia-target_b_ 153684.html Miller, Frank, and David Mazzucchelli. Batman: Year One Deluxe Edition. New York: DC Comics. 2005. Miller, Toby. The Television Genre Book. Glen Creeber, editor. London: British Film Institute. 2001. Murray, Will. “Jumping the Bat-Shark: The Demise of Batman.” In Gotham City 14 Miles: 14 Essays on Why the 1960s Batman TV Series Matters. Jim Beard, editor. Edwardsville, IL: Sequart Research and Literacy Organization. 2010, pp. 219–42. Nazzaro, Joe. “Bat Attitude.” Starlog, No. 210, January 1995, pp. 50–53. Newman, David, and Robert Benton. “Remember the Sixties?” Esquire, August 1966, pp. 109–15. Pyron, Darden Asbury. Liberace: An American Boy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2000. Santo, Avi. “Batman Versus The Green Hornet: The Merchandisable TV Text and the Paradox of Licensing in the Classical Network Era.” Cinema Journal 49, No. 2, Winter 2010, pp. 63–85. Scivally, Bruce. Billion Dollar Batman: A History of the Caped Crusader on Film, Radio and Television from 10¢ Comic Book to Global Icon. Wilmette, IL: Henry Gray Publishing. 2011. Semple Jr., Lorenzo. “Requiem for a Cheeky Batman.” Variety, July 9, 2008. www.variety.com/article/VR1117988712/ Silverstone, Roger. Why Study Media? London: Sage. 1999. Skow, John. “Has TV (gasp!) Gone Batty?” The Saturday Evening Post, No. 10, May 7, 1966, pp. 93–97. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1966. Spigel, Lynn, and Henry Jenkins. “Same Bat Channel, Different Bat Times: Mass Culture and Popular Memory.” In The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media. Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, editors. New York: Routledge. 1991, pp. 117–48. Sternheimer, Karen. Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility. New York: Routledge. 2011. Taylor, Ella. Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989.

Filmography and Videography

Batman. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson. Screenplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Twentieth Century Fox. 1966. “Batman Displays His Knowledge.” Directed by Robert Sparr. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 23 February 1967. “Batman is Riled.” Directed by Don Weiss. Teleplay and story by Robert Dozier. ABC. 27 January 1966. “The Bat’s Kow Tow.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 15 December 1966. “Black Widow Strikes Again.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Robert Mintz. ABC. 15 March 1967.

Bibliography

“Television: Holy Flypaper!” Time Magazine, January 28, 1966. www.time. com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842413,00.html Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage Publications. 2004. Uslan, Michael. The Boy Who Loved Batman. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 2011. Van Hise, James. Batmania. Las Vegas, NV: Pioneer Books. 1989. Voger, Mark. “Are the Dynamic Duo Bitter?” Comics Scene Spectacular, No. 7, September 1992, pp. 20–22. Wallace, Lewis. “Nicolas Cage Invokes Adam West for Kick-Ass Role.” www.wired.com/underwire/2010/04/nicolas-cage/ Ward, Burt. Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights. Los Angeles: Logical Figment Books. 1995. Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart. 1954. West, Adam. Back to the Batcave. London: Titan Books. 1994. Whitney, Dwight. “Batty Over Batman?” TV Guide, March 26-April 1, 1966, pp. 15–20. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. 1977. ———. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books. 1974. Winick, Charles. “The Beige Epoch: Depolarization of Sex Roles in America,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 376 (March 1968), pp. 18–24. Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001.

139

Bibliography

140

“The Bookworm Turns.” Directed by Larry Peerce. Teleplay and story by Rick Vollaerts. ABC. 20 April 1966. “The Cat’s Meow.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 14 December 1966. “Catwoman Goes to College.” Directed by Robert Sparr. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 22 February 1967. “Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill.” Directed by Sam Strangis. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 14 December 1967. “Caught in the Spider’s Den.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Robert Mintz. ABC. 16 March 1967. “The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes.” Directed by James Neilson. Teleplay and story by Bill Finger and Charles Sinclair. ABC. 12 October 1966. “The Dead Ringers.” Directed by Larry Peerce. Teleplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ABC. 27 October 1966. “The Devil’s Fingers.” Directed by Larry Peerce. Teleplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ABC. 26 October 1966. “Dizzonner the Penguin.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 3 November 1966. “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 14 September, 1967. “The Funny Feline Felonies.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 28 December 1967. “Green Ice.” Directed by George WaGGner. Teleplay and story by Max Hodge. ABC. 9 November 1966. “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul.” Directed by Murray Golden. Teleplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ABC. 3 March 1966. “Hi Diddle Riddle.” Directed by Robert Butler. Teleplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ABC. 12 January 1966. “Hizzonner the Penguin.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph . Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 2 November 1966. “Ice Spy.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Charles Hoffman. ABC. 29 March 1967. “The Impractical Joker.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Jay Thompson and Charles Hoffman. ABC. 16 November 1966. “The Joker Goes to School.” Directed by Murray Golden. Teleplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ABC. 2 March 1966. “The Joker is Wild.” Directed by Don Weiss. Teleplay and story by Robert Dozier. ABC. 26 January 1966. “The Joker’s Last Laugh.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Story by Peter Rabe. ABC. 15 February 1967.

Discography

Allen & Rossi. The Adventures of Batman & Rubin LP. Mercury, 1967. Jan and Dean. Jan and Dean Meet Batman LP. Liberty, 1966. The Liverpool Scene. Amazing Adventures of the Liverpool Scene LP. RCA, 1968. Ward, Burt. “Boy Wonder, I Love You” b/w “Orange Colored Sky” single. MGM, 1966. West, Adam. “Miranda” b/w “You Only See Her” single. 20th Century Fox Records, 1966.

Bibliography

“King Tut’s Coup.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. Story by Leo and Pauline Townsend. ABC. 8 March 1967. “Louie the Lilac.” Directed by George WaGGner. Teleplay and story by Dwight Taylor. ABC. 26 October 1967. “Marsha, Queen of Diamonds.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 23 November 1966. “Marsha’s Scheme with Diamonds.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 24 November 1966. “Minerva, Mayhem and Millionaires.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Charles Hoffman. ABC. 3 March 1968. “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 18 January 1968. “The Ogg Couple.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanford Sherman. ABC. 21 December 1967. “A Piece of the Action.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Charles Hoffman. ABC. 1 March 1967. “The Riddler’s False Notion.” Directed by Charles R. Rondeau. Teleplay and story by Dick Carr. ABC. 28 April 1966. “The Ring of Wax.” Directed by James B. Clark. Teleplay and story by Jack Paritz and Bob Rodgers. ABC. 30 March 1966. “Scat! Darn Catwoman.” Directed by Oscar Rudolph. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 25 January 1967. “The Unkindest Tut of All.” Directed by Sam Strangis. Teleplay and story by Stanley Ralph Ross. ABC. 19 October 1967. “While Gotham City Burns.” Directed by Larry Peerce. Teleplay and story by Rik Vollaerts. ABC. 21 April 1966.

141

Index

ABC (American Broadcasting Company), 1, 51, 68, 117; creation of Batman, 3–4; publicity campaign, 111 Adams, Neal, 124–25, 126 Adventures of Batman and Rubin, The, 118–20 Adventures of Superman, The, 3, 9, 15 Alfred, 2, 19, 27, 42, 44, 90, 91, 96, 102, 105; and Batgirl, 48, 51, 52; paternal role, 20 Allen, Marty, 118 Allen, Steve, 81 Allred, Lee, 125 Allred, Michael, 125 antiwar movement, 14, 38, 40 Aquaman, 79 Aunt Harriet, 2, 18, 27, 44, 59, 78, 82, 91, 93, 96, 98 Aunt Hilda, 41–42, 44 Bails, Jerry, 116 Bankhead, Tallulah, 71–72, 74

Batcave, the, 2, 13, 20, 26–27, 41, 42, 44, 49, 51, 52, 89, 90, 109, 111, 118 Batgirl, 47, 48–52, 53, 56, 87, 112; asexuality, 50; and Catwoman, 65, 66; female agency, 58–59; as female derivative, 45, 51, 54–55; introduction, 39, 48 Batman, agent of state authority, 17, 18, 20, 22, 25, 35; American values, 17; and Bruce Wayne, 75–76, 101–3, 105–7; in the comic books, 7, 8, 16, 17, 111; father figure, 16, 18, 56; homosexuality, 8, 42; and marriage, 24, 42–44; masculine authority, 42, 52; origin, 15–16; use of gadgets, 3, 4, 76, 103, 105, 107, 111; as superhero, 5, 16; vigilantism, 16, 20, 123 Batman (1943 serial), 4, 5, 8 Batman (television), American culture, 2, 9, 56; Bat-climb, 83–84; critique of patriotism,

143

Index

144

Batman (television) (continued) 15; episode structure, 2–3; hybridization of genres, 25–26; merchandising, 107, 109; postwar theme song, 3, 114–15; reflexivity, 73, 101; as satire, 4, 22, 32; use of direct address, 31, 34, 84; use of guest stars, 33, 63, 70, 71, 74, 75, 86, 92 Batman (Leslie H. Martinson), 26–28; as satire of American military, 13–14 Batman and Robin (Joel Schumacher), 127 Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan), 125–26 Batmania, 116, 123–24 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, 124 Batman: Year One, 124–25 Batmobile, the, 3, 13, 42, 49, 100, 103, 107, 118 “Bat Poem,” 115, 118 Bat-poles, 49, 112 Being-as-Playing-a-Role, 6, 10, 72. See also Sontag, Susan Ben Casey, 26 Bewitched, 41 Black Widow, 22, 71–72 Blake, Madge, 2. See also Aunt Harriet Bonanza, 33 Bookworm, the, 106 Boorstin, Daniel J., 34 “Boy Wonder, I Love You,” 108. See also Zappa, Frank Buchwald, Art, 34 Buono, Victor, 14. See also King Tut Cage, Nicholas, 126 camp, 4, 5–7, 8, 9–10, 33, 34, 70–71, 72, 74, 76, 88, 93, 95,

97, 102, 107, 114, 115, 116, 117, 123–24, 125, 127; as denial of crisis, 63, 68 Catwoman, 24, 26, 37, 40, 45, 50, 62, 63, 68, 69, 74, 77, 81, 106, 116, 117, 118; sexuality, 59–60; 64–65, 66–67 Chad and Jeremy, 81, 82 Champlin, Charles, 1 Chandell, 93, 94–96 civil rights movement, 15, 40, 62, 67 Clark, Dick, 84 comic books, popularity, 7, 16; as source material, 3, 7, 8, 16, 83, 109–110; and Wertham, 9, 22, 91 consumption, 9, 11, 14, 47, 52, 69, 98, 105, 107–9, 112, 127. See also production and consumption convergence culture, 7, 100 corporate-state, 45 Craig, Yvonne, 39, 53–54, 55, 59, 112, and identity politics, 40. See also Gordon, Barbara; Batgirl Dark Knight, The (Christopher Nolan), 125–26 Dark Knight Rises, The (Christopher Nolan), 125–26 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 84 DC Comics, 79, 85, 116, 124, 125 Defenders, The, 26 Donahue, Troy, 79 Dozier, William, 8, 16, 86, 99, 108, 111; and Batgirl, 54; as narrator, 3, 42, 44, 48 ,51 56, 73, 84, 90; creation of Batman, 3–4, 77–78; letter to Batmania, 123–24; playing himself as character, 73–74

homosexuality, 8, 40, 42, 44, 94–95 Horwitz, Howie, 8, 54, 73–74 Hunter, Tab, 79

Index

Dragnet, 26, 27 Dr. Kildare, 26 emancipatory ideals, 35, 45, 47 Fagan, Tom, 123–24, 126 Family Guy, 126 Finger, Bill, 116–17 FitzSimons, Charles, 60 Flash, the, 79 Gabor, Zsa Zsa, 73–74 Gautier, Dick, 55 Genovese, Kitty, 49 Gernreich, Rudi, 65 Gervis, Bert, 77. See Ward, Burt Get Smart, 26 Gordon, Barbara, 48–52, 54–55, 57, 59, and the single-girl myth, 49. See also Batgirl Gordon, Commissioner James, 2, 18, 23, 27, 28, 29–30, 36, 41, 42, 44, 48, 50, 51, 56, 57, 65, 71, 75–76, 82–83, 87, 89, 98, 102, 105 Gorshin, Frank, 4. See also Riddler, The Grayson, Dick, 2, 17–22, 24, 28, 35, 44, 49, 78, 79, 82, 85, 91, 94, 96, 112 Great Society, the, 23, 62 Greenway Productions, 3, 4 Gunsmoke, 33 Hall, Stuart, 8–9, 40, 86 Hamilton, Neil, 2. See also Gordon, Commissioner James Hefti, Neal, 114, 115 Henry, E. William, 33–34 Hirt, Al, 114 Ho, Don, 84

identity politics, 11, 40 I Spy, 26 It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman, 8 Jan and Dean, 114 Jenkins, Henry, 5, 7, 9, 86, 127 John, Elton, 95 Johnson, Lyndon B., 13, 27, 34, 62 Johnson, “Lady Bird,” 67 Johnson, Van, 70 Joker, the, 18, 19–20, 21, 23, 26, 59 85, 86–87, 89–91, 106, 114, 116, 117; deviant father figure, 20 Jones, Carolyn, 41. See also Marsha, Queen of Diamonds Julia, 45 Kane, Bob, 16, 111, 116–17, 119 Kennedy, John F., 15 Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn), 126 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 15, 62 King Tut, 14, 17, 23, 84 Kitt, Eartha, 69, 77; blacklisted, 67–68; emancipatory ideals, 45, 47; racial identity, 60–64, 66, and identity politics, 40. See also Catwoman Knickerbocker, Suzy, 84 Krizman, Serge, 109–10 Leave it to Beaver, 27 Lewis, David, 24. See also Crichton, Warden Lewis, Jerry, 84 Liberace, 92–97

145

Index

146

Liberace Show, The, 93 Lichtenstein, Roy, 8, 100 Linkletter, Art, 84 Liverpool Scene, the, 115–16 Man from U.N.C.L.E., 26 Ma Parker, 70 Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, 40, 41–44 Marvel Comics, 8 Mayor Linseed, 29–30, 32, 57 Mazzucchelli, David, 125 McDowall, Roddy, 106 McLean, Michael, 70, 83 Meredith, Burgess, 13. See also Penguin, the Miller, Frank, 124–25, 126 Minerva, 73–74 Minstrel, the, 70 “Miranda,” 108 Miss Nora Clavicle, 57–59 Mod Squad, The, 51 Monkees, The, 33 Mr. Freeze, 17, 75, 92, 106 Napier, Alan, 2, 79. See also Alfred Newmar, Julie, 24, 64, 66; sexuality, 40, 60. See also Catwoman Nico, 10 Nolan, Christopher, 125–126 nostalgia, 5, 6, 7, 17, 22, 28, 32, 33, 33, 34, 70, 71, 83, 101, 120, 124, 127 NOW (National Organization for Women), 47, 55. See also women’s rights movement O’Hara, Police Chief, 22, 23, 30, 41, 42, 44, 57, 71, 75, 87, 89, 105 O’Neil, Dennis, 124–25

parody, 5, 18, 28, 32, 36, 48, 63–64, 69, 70, 84, 90, 91, 92, 100, 109, 115, 117, 118–20, 124 patriarchal capitalism, 42, 48, 54 Paul Revere and the Raiders, 32 Penguin, the, 13, 26, 28–32, 34, 48, 87, 117, 118 Perry Mason, 26 Pop art, 4, 5, 8, 10, 94, 97, 100–101, 115, 116–18, 123 production and consumption, 6, 25, 27, 33, 120 pseudo-event, 34, 35 Ramos, Mel, 100 Reeves, George, 15, 81 Repp, Stafford, 22. See also O’Hara, Police Chief Riddler, the, 4, 26, 59, 87, 99, 116, 117, 118, 125 Robin, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17– 18, 19–21, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 28–29, 30–32, 37, 40, 41, 42, 44, 48, 49, 51,52, 54–56, 58, 65, 66, 70, 72, 74–75, 76, 77, 79, 80–82, 83–84 ,85–86 ,87 , 89–91, 92, 96, 100, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 127 Robinson, Edward G., 84 Robinson, Jerry, 117 Romero, Cesar, 18, 86, 88–90, 114, 125. See also Joker, the Ross, Stanley Ralph, 64 Rossi, Steve, 118 Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, 33 Rush, Barbara, 57 Saturday Night Live, 126 Seduction of the Innocent, 8. See also Wertham, Fredric

textual poaching, 7–8, 11, 86, 100, 105, 117 That Girl, 45, 50 30 Rock, 126 Twenty-One, 33 unruly woman, 59, 63, 64 Uslan, Michael, 125, 126 utopia, 7–9, 11–12, 17, 23, 27–28, 33, 62, 68, 97–98, 100, 101, 103, 119, 121

Vietnam War, 14, 15, 34–35, 60, 67, 115 Wallach, Eli, 75, 92 Ward, Burt, 2, 52, 55,70, 72, 74, 77–79, 80–81, 83, 85–86, 96, 108, 125. See also Grayson, Dick; Robin Crichton, Warden, 23, 24, 36, 87 Warhol, Andy, 8, 10, 115. See also Pop art Wayne, Bruce, 2–3, 7, 17–21, 22, 23, 24–25, 28, 35–36, 44, 45, 48–49, 52, 54, 57, 73, 77, 78, 82, 84, 89, 91, 95–96, 108, 109, 112, 114, 125; and Batman, 75–76, 101–3, 105–7 Wertham, Fredric, 8, 9, 22, 40, 44, 91, 94 West, Adam, 2, 17, 31, 52, 67, 70, 74, 76, 77–84, 85–86, 89, 91–92, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 107–8, 109, 125, 126. See also Batman; Wayne, Bruce What’s My Line?, 90 White, Biljo, 124 Who, the, 114 Williams, Raymond, 9, 93, 109 Winters, Shelley, 70 women’s rights movement, 15, 40, 45, 54, 55, 57 Wray, Link, 114 Zappa, Frank, 108

Index

Semple, Jr., Lorenzo, 4, 8, 16, 77, 96, 99–100, 124 Shindig, 4 Simpsons, The, 126 Sinatra, Frank, 70 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The, 32 Sontag, Susan, 6–7, 10, 70, 71, 102. See also camp Spider-Man, 8 Spigel, Lynn, 5, 9, 127 Sprang, Dick, 117 Standells, the, 114 Stanton, Frank, 62 Stevens, Allan. See Allen, Steve superhero: as celebrity, 85; homosexuality, 94; as national symbol, 7, 8, 9, 11, 119, 127; unmarked transvestite, 97 Superman, 15, 81 Susie, 18, 19, 20–21, 22

147